


The Starblasters

by Dracopaladin



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Lucretia's POV, mostly - Freeform, superhero au, will tag for more characters/relationships once I've written them
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-26
Updated: 2018-03-11
Packaged: 2019-03-09 20:34:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 29,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13489248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dracopaladin/pseuds/Dracopaladin
Summary: Lup and Barry are dead, and then they're not. Someone or something has brought them back and united them with Taako, Magnus, Merle, and Davenport, giving all of them strange powers they need to learn to control if they want to protect the people they love. Together, they form a group of superheroes that staves off evil from the small city of Phandolin. Meanwhile, Lucretia grows into her role as the Director.





	1. Entry One: Ground Zero, Night One

Entry One: Ground Zero, Night One

Lup and Barry weren’t enjoying the picnic, even before the plane hit them. It was humid, dark, and surprisingly loud on the campus lawn. Cicadas, crickets, and drunk frat boys gave mating calls from all across the quad, and it was too cloudy to see the stars. The wine (Taako’s choice, he said it would go well with the mini prosciutto sandwiches) had gone flat, having been left open all night. The conversation was lively, passionate, and heartfelt.

  
“What the actual fuck! No, don’t you dare do this to me, Barrington. I’m a fifth-year fashion student, I’m close to the top of my class. It’s not—”

  
“Denim goes with everything. Think about it, Lup! It obviously goes with everything blue. It’s blue, too. They match.”

  
“That’s not how it works!”

  
“It goes with red too. Contrast. Same with orange. Green and purple are complements. Yellow is off-contrast, Purple is off-complement. It makes a statement.”

  
“The statement being ‘I took a class in color theory when I was a sophomore a few years back and slept through the final?’”

  
“Lup, baby, honey, sweetie, think about it. It’s a universal constant. Blue Jeans look good with everything.”

  
Lup took a vicious bite out of her mini sandwich, and Barry gulped in fear as she downed a swig of wine from the bottle, made a disgusted face, then took another drag and went back to arguing. “Barry, we are going to kiss goodnight and you are going to walk me to my dorm, give me a chaste goodnight kiss, and go back to your shitty apartment. I’m going to pretend you didn’t just try and proselytize your fuckin’ Denim Cult on our date. Sound good?”

  
“Babe, I have an even better idea,” Barry grinned, “what if you let me say I’m wrong, walk you back to your dorm, give you a close-enough-to-chaste good night kiss, and go home to my shity apartment? With plans to go out again, next Tuesday maybe? At the chicken restaurant with modern art on the walls? I’ll pay?”

  
Lup’s anger dissipated slowly, and after a long moment she smiled warmly. “Barry, you know how happy I get when you offer to give me good food for free. And how happy I get when I win an argument. You’re a pretty smart dude.”

  
Barry pushed his glasses further up the bridge of his nose, and Lup burst out laughing. When she’d composed herself, she grinned at him and reached out to touch his shoulder. “Babe, thanks for letting me vent some steam tonight. I’ve been stressed lately, and having the chance to just yell about fashion at someone with no shame… I know we don’t say this enough, but thank you.”

  
Barry smiled, embarrassed. “You’re—”

  
Barry was kept from completing his sentence by the sound of a propeller whirring, louder and louder before a disturbing popping sound from above. It was followed by a sputtering of engines, two muffled shouts, and a metallic groan. Then a small airplane appeared, diving nose first through the low clouds, heading for Barry and Lup’s small picnic set up on the college lawn. Lup’s back was to it, but as she heard the plane descend she grabbed for Barry and moved to jump out of the way. He latched on to her as well, and they both dove to get clear of the incoming plane.

  
They weren’t fast enough, and Barry was hit a glancing (but sufficient) blow by the nose of the plane while Lup was caught by one of the propellers. Both of them died within seconds, and they won’t tell me what that was like no matter how I ask.  
From the heavens descended two short men. One was middle-aged, wearing a navy blue coat and grey slacks. He had a finely tended ginger mustache, half of which was singed, and shoulder-length orange hair tied into a ponytail. His companion was an older man, with buzzcut grey hair and an unkempt salt-and-pepper beard, wearing khaki shorts and a greenish hawaiian shirt with one sleeve torn off. They were both strapped tightly into ejection seats connected to old, almost tattered parachutes that let them float slowly to the ground. Both of them were screaming.

  
Taako woke up the moment that Lup died. His heart was racing, pumping blood into his limbs so quickly that he jittered and so forcefully into his lungs that he struggled for breath. He was out of bed and running down the hallway before the thought even crossed his mind, that Lup was dead and he was alone. He didn’t slow down, but he felt like throwing up or crying or going to sleep and never waking up. But first, he had to find his sister. Or what was left of her. He picked up his pace even more, his feet leading him further and further down a path he didn’t consciously know to follow.

  
Most people present ran from the site of the accident. The plane’s wreckage had caught on fire, immolating the bodies of Lup and Barry and searing a huge circle of grass black. The fire was spreading slowly in the damp early night grass, as spark after spark slowly leaped further away from the fire. Of the dozen or so students within sight range, most had run into the nearest building to call 911. A few had just run, panicked and afraid. One or two stood stock still, observing the fire in a state of shock.  
Magnus Burnsides saw the smoke from half a block away, so he made an illegal u-turn in his truck and drove at 20 miles above the speed limit to try and reach the college and see if someone was in danger.  
The two older men landed close to the burning plane, and as soon as they could they each unfastened themselves from their ejection seats and rushed towards the wreckage. They could only get so close safely, but they kept circling around trying to find an angle that would let them get closer to see or even reach the couple under the plane.

  
“Shit, shit, shit!” the grey-haired man began nervously, “Dav, they’re dead, I think they’re dead, we should maybe get going, don’tcha think? I mean, we can’t help them. There’s no way they lived. Shit. Are you okay? Maybe we should, go, get to a hospital. Are you okay?”

  
“Merle,” the other man spoke a bit more calmly, “I’m gonna—I’m going to need you to focus. I’m fine, those kids aren’t. We haven’t heard any screams, didn’t—uh, did you notice? They, uh, probably died on impact. If they were burning alive, we’d know.”  
There was a moment where they were in a bubble of quiet as the fire crackled and they stared at the wreckage. People were shouting and screaming from nearby buildings, but that sounded like it was miles away.  
“That’s—ah, that’s a bit dark, isn’t it? I’m sorry,” Davenport sighed, “I think—I mean, we might be in shock, right now. This is all my fault. I was supposed to keep us safe. Everyone safe. But then I was blind and the next thing I knew… I messed up. Oh, god, I messed up. They’re dead, Merle.”

  
“I said that already, didn’t I, Dav? Come on, let’s get away from here. We—we can’t do anything to help them, so we could maybe get the hell out of—ah, shit.”

  
Taako saw the fire, and he slowed down to a jog. Then a walk. Then a shamble, until his pace was practically a crawl as he approached the wrecked plane. He either didn’t see or didn’t care about Merle and Davenport, who watched him approach with anxious curiosity. Taako walked up to the point where the fire created a wall of heat between him and the plane. The air was dry and blistering, and the fine hairs on Taako’s arms were pressed flat, pushed down by the superheated air. He tried to take another step towards the plane. Into the fire. Then a burly guy dressed like a lumberjack tackled him, knocking him away from the fire. Taako looked up into the distressed face of Magnus Burnsides.

  
“Hey! Are you okay?” Magnus asked in concern.

  
Taako didn’t answer, didn’t respond except by trying to buck the larger man from on top of him. Considering Taako is around half Magnus's size, he didn’t make an impact.

  
“Was there someone else in the plane? Was anyone hurt? How can I help?”

  
Davenport stepped forward, motioning towards Merle to approach them as well. "My… Merle, here, and I, my name’s Davenport, Davenport O’Droi, we were in the plane, but there was some sort of, I think, a malfunction? We managed to eject, but the plane crashed, and there were two people who it hit, we’ve been trying but we can’t think of any way to reach them, but I think they’re dead. I don’t know what to do.” Davenport ejected it all in one rush of words, his voice high with fear and fatigue.

  
“Just breathe, okay?” Magnus looked over at Davenport and got up off of Taako, “ I’m here to help. I know this is bad, but you have to plan on what we can do now.”

  
Davenport nodded, seeming more centered once he had a focus. Merle wasn’t quite as soothed, but he was no longer preparing to run. Taako stood up and looked at the wreckage in silence for a moment.

  
“My sister’s under there.” He collapsed to his knees, and there was only the sound of fire crackling.

It was Merle who walked over to him, sat down beside his kneeling form, trying to give him an anchor. The four of them stayed like that for a while, none of them could tell me how long; Taako on his knees in front of the fire, face blank, Merle offering support, Magnus standing behind them watching in case the fire spread, Davenport hanging back, planning what to do next. Then a white light enveloped them, and they were Elsewhere.

  
_Oh,_ a voice echoed into a white void, _the flock is down a fledgling._

  
Each of them was adrift, alone in the blindingly bright white light. A new voice sounded again, and more than anything each of them thought it was coming from them and echoing outwards into the emptiness.

  
_Your burden is great, and I’m sorry. We’ll get right on that._

A slightly different voice, more guttural.

 _We will fix you._ Another voice.

 _Strengthen you._ Another.

_But you must be prepared._

_You must fend off the emptiness, the loneliness, the Hunger._

_You are together. Always, by the fabric of your futures bound._

_You’re going to fight. Maybe you’re even going to win._

_You’re broken vessels, fragile and weak._

_But still._

_I’d wish you luck, but there’s no such thing._

_I wish you Luck._

_And I, Strength._

_Faith._

_Duty._

_Perseverance._

_Love._

_And Mercy._

_This next part is going to hurt. A lot. Sorry._

And then they weren’t alone anymore, and the White was gone. Taako was on his knees in front of the fire, face blank, Merle sitting beside him, Magnus standing behind them wondering what the fuck was going on, Davenport hanging back, planning what to do next. They all felt perfectly fine.

  
The area around them was the same, mostly—the fire had died down a bit while they were “gone,” and it looked like the plane would burn itself out before the blaze spread. The grass was too wet, the air too humid. A few people had come out of buildings to look at the spectacle, and had quickly decided not to check out the burning wreckage. Two spectral figures hung above the burning plane.

  
One of the figures looked like human-shaped hurricane made of smoke, lightning shooting off of his body as his blood-red eyes surveyed the scene. The other, close enough to him that their hands almost touched, was a flaming statue of ash, cinder, and sparks flowing over one another like liquid magma. She had long hair that looked like tongues of flame and large amber eyes that focused on the kneeling man in front of her.

  
“Okay, Taako, I have to ask: do I look hot?” Lup asked her brother.

  
Taako looked up, tears streaming down his face; he’d been crying just a little bit since he’d reached the plane. Maybe since he’d woken up, he still can’t remember, he just wasn’t paying attention at the time. He looked up at the ghosts—they looked like ghosts, insubstantial and unreal like they were from a dream—and recognized Lup instantly. She was still taller than most women her age, though since she was floating in mid air she couldn’t add a few inches in heels like she loved to do. She still fidgeted a little bit, toes twitching in the air as she looked down at him. Her hair was still a total mess, her eyes still crinkled at the corners like she was about to laugh or yell at any moment. She was still Lup, so clearly herself that Taako would have known her anywhere.

“Lu, you look radiant,” Taako grinned despite his tears, managing to choke out, “Almost gave me a heart attack there, warn a guy next time!”

“Aw, a little heart attack never killed anyone. And there won’t be any warnings needed, because I won’t die again, because I’m undead now! We’re ghosts, Barry!”

Lup and Taako turned to look at the dark form of Barry, who nodded at them silently.

“What’s up, Barold,” Taako said in a monotone.

Barry’s red eyes narrowed slightly, the only expression in his shadowy form as he whispered, “Boo.”

They both lasted a second before breaking out into laughter, and Taako turned around to Merle to introduce his friends.

“This is my sister, Lup, and this is her boyfriend Barold John Bluejeans Junior. Sorry, I’m,” Taako took a moment to wipe some more tears away, he just couldn’t stop crying, “I’m really glad they’re still around. Uh, do you guys wanna get something to eat? And maybe talk?”

“There’s a good 24/7 IHOP a few blocks away!” interjected Merle.

“You realize we’re fucking ghosts, right?” Lup snickered, “Barry and I can’t, like, walk in and order a fat stack of ‘cakes.”

“We can wait outside.” Barry paused, then flew a foot or so higher in the air. “Lup, we can fly! We can fly. Fuck pancakes! Everybody, I’ll be down in like four hours to talk about how fucked up this is. I’ll be in the IHOP parking lot trying to haunt teenagers getting high or something. Lup, I’ll race you to the state line?

Just like that he and Lup were gone, their forms leaving a trail of smoke next to a trail of ash. Taako could just barely make out a shouted “Bye Bro!” as if it came shouted from hundreds of meters away. Magnus drove them all to the IHOP in his truck, Taako sitting shotgun while Merle and Davenport shared the back. They got a booth by the windows, ordered an endless stack of buttermilk pancakes for Magnus, Cinnastack for Taako, Harvest Grain nut for Merle, and a 55+ Healthy Heart Choice Make Your Own Omelette for Davenport. Then they got to talking about what they’d seen.

  
⧖⧖⧖ Listen, I’m going to summarize the IHOP Argument. They were there for four hours, none of them want to sit down and give me transcripts of what they said, and the important part is coming up next anyway. Suffice it to say Magnus ate a lot of pancakes and they all decided Magic was real. Merle took a while to convince, but it’s hard to deny the supernatural when you’ve seen ghosts earlier in the night. They were a bit confused about what had been going on in the White, but all of them agreed it probably wasn’t good. They made a groupchat, and Taako said he’d add Lup and Barry when they got new phones. Their old ones burned up with their bodies. All of them were pretty tired, and it was around three am when they left the IHOP to find Barry in the parking lot possessing a trashcan and chasing some teenage stoners around. They could hear Lup laughing from above them, but she was invisible, so that led to a bit of confusion. Since Davenport was almost asleep on his feet, Merle decided for the group that they would all go home and meet up again at the IHOP the next day at lunch to “‘plan’ or whatever the invisible assholes in discount Heaven told us to do.”  
Meanwhile, I was investigating the crash site and making my own plans, but I’ll write about that in my next entry. Until then, dear readers, Watch The Sky. ⧖⧖⧖  
-L


	2. Entry Two: Setting the Stage

Entry Two: Setting the Stage

⧖⧖⧖ I’d woken up around three in the afternoon the day that Lup and Barry died, and it wasn’t until four or so that I was ready for work. I cracked open my chromebook, turned on my technically illegal police scanner, and began looking for Leads. It looks dumb written down like that, I know, but I always capitalize the L in my head, and I strive for accuracy and detail above all else in these entries. Anyway.

I thought there might be something on the police dispatcher’s channel, but they were just dealing with mundane crimes. There was an armed robbery on 14th street, an assault and battery on Duke, and a disturbance of the peace in the lobby of Archibald’s Pizzaria. Nothing unusual, though I would expect more crime on a nice summer night. Still, it felt nice to be pleasantly surprised. I browsed the usual message boards online, but it was only rumors and speculation. There hadn’t been any new sightings since I’d checked last night, but somebody was posting an argument that the Mayor was a ghost, so that was fun. Some of the more experienced board members were filling the newbie in on how things worked.

**Topic:** the mayor Is a ghost?? From: WTS Forums▶General Fuckery▶Theories (Unconfirmed)▶Propose a Theory [Flamelegend42](Rookie Poster) on June 5, 11:29:40: I’m telling you, I saw the Mayor walk through a wall! HE was on the one side and then on the other? And I think he was inatangible too, u guys should check this out. I saw a press conference with him on tv like a week ago where i think he definitely floated a little and didn’t say anything then but I think otehr people saw? Maybe someone else knows something? Also... **Keep Reading**

[ItsyBitsyIncident](Moderator)(Expert Photographer)(Veteran Astronomer) on June 5, 11:34:58: Listen, no one cares what you saw. No pictures, no proof, no post. If you don’t link any evidence at the bottom of your post, it will be flagged and you could get kicked. Don’t waste our time if you’re not going to go to the trouble of sourcing your shit.

[Flamelegend42](Rookie Poster) on June 5, 11:37:27: OK, OK, i’ll delete the thread!! *eyeroll*.

[ItsyBitsyIncident](Moderator)(Expert Photographer)(Veteran Astronomer) on June 5, 11:40:39: Holy shit, no way, I gotta save this for Arx. She’ll love this, I guarantee. /pin thread.

I allowed myself a small smile, and I’ll admit; I did love it. I got to typing, glad to have something to do for the afternoon.

[ArxVeritas](Moderator)(Expert Astronomer)(Full-time Disaster) on June 5, 16:13:16: Oh my God. I can’t believe it. The mayor is a ghost. A ghost is our mayor. Yeah, I’ll get this written up right away, seems accurate, oh man this is just… this is some primo shit right here. Thanks Itsy, I’ll see what I can do with it, maybe make it front page material.

[ItsyBitsyIncident](Moderator)(Expert Photographer)(Veteran Astronomer) on June 5, 16:16:02: Np Arx, DM me a link to the article when you’re done!

I took a screenshot of the board, opened up a word document, and began writing my daily garbage. I decided to title it You Won’t Believe What this Person Saw the Mayor do! Shocking Testimony! And found a blurry picture of the Mayor in profile online. That plus a quick ten minutes or so of typing landed me my first story of the day. I emailed the draft to Vanessa, my boss at The Phandalin Chronicle, who I knew would take a swift look over it before publishing without editing for grammar or mistakes; we knew each other well.

Work for the day done, I got to my real job, putting my chromebook in a small backpack to carry it around and slinging it onto my back as I stepped out of my apartment. It was an hour or so past sundown, by my estimation, and I was hungry because I hadn’t eaten since breakfast at 3:30. I walked down to the ramen store by the metro station, and I listened. I kept a small notebook and pencil in hand, and absentmindedly jotted details down as I walked. The office building halfway down Cook Street was still being renovated, taking longer than expected. A group of homeless people were conversing in an alley, talking in low voices about their various fortunes. A young woman with bright red hair was sitting on the stairs up to an apartment complex and crying. I wanted to stop and investigate these and half a dozen other things, but I was hungry, so I just noted them for later and kept walking to my ramen shop. I bought some yakisoba in a bun with shredded red onion for $4.96, paid with a five dollar bill and told the shop owner to keep the change.

While I was paying, I heard (then saw after turning around a moment later) an ambulance streak by. Behind it followed a police car, another ambulance, and two firetrucks. When your job is to gather information, you learn to notice disturbances in the norm not just for the fact that they’re different, but for the fact that they affect everyone uniquely. Some people shrank away from the caravan of emergency vehicles, others stopped to stare, or followed them at a slower pace, or tried to avoid the situation altogether. I asked the shop owner for a bag to store my dinner, regretfully stowing my yakisoba in the paper bag before I’d even gotten a bite. I thanked the man and walked away, taking out my notebook once more to write as I walked. I followed the sound of sirens; it sounded like someone had had a very bad night.

I arrived to PCU around eleven, and the scene was disturbing, to say the least. I watched from a distance at the edge of the campus lawn as paramedics wheeled two bodies, both charred beyond recognition, away from a smoldering fire. It looked like they had died in a plane crash, and the plane itself was only now dying down from a blaze to a cinder-covered wreck. Occasionally, red and orange sparks danced off the engine ports of the plane to ignite a piece of grass before dying out. It looked depressing, and I was tempted to go home without writing any of this down and to just forget it. Two things stopped me.

First of all, there was a section of ground that had been transformed into black glass. I’d thought it was a piece of blackened metal at first, but upon a closer look I could see beneath the plane the outline of a body pressed flat against the ground, an imprint of obsidian in the earth. That was interesting. The other thing of note was the strange light I could just barely note in the plane’s cockpit. With every few sparks coming off the plane, I would note a white spark fly off, one that didn’t set anything on fire but emitted a bright, pure light. No one else acknowledged it. Slowly, carefully, I inched closer to the crash site. There was a police cordon around the area, but I could walk right up to the police tape and pretend to be with the interested college students peeking at the morbid scene. The police weren’t happy they were there, but they couldn’t easily disperse the crowd of onlookers, and they had forensics to do while the scene was fresh. That meant I could get within sight range of the black glass and the white fire.

The white fire was beautiful. As soon as I saw it, I knew I had found something special. Writing it down as I thought, I wrote, It seems I’ve found something very—and then I was in the White, hands empty and mind scrambling for an answer.

_Oh, look who decided to show up,_ a clear, teasing voice spoke from directly behind me.

_Don’t be rude to the fledgeling,_ I heard a gruff tone echo from far ahead of me.

_She has so much to learn,_ a woman spoke sadly, just out of sight.

_And so little time to learn it._

_How to be heartless and compassionate._

_How to lead and follow._

_How to plan and adapt and then restart._

_Lucretia. You need to find the others, they can’t survive without you._

_You’ll help each other live, thrive, grow beyond what we can predict._

_Just trying to envision it hurts our heads._

_You’re a catalyst, all of you together, that will begin the end of nothingness._

_Necare Fames, if you will._

_Oh, Lucretia, You’re going to do amazing._

_You’re going to make plans and help them and lead them along the path._

_You’re going to be their conscience._

_Their caution, their foresight._

_Their Director._

And then I woke up, having collapsed to the ground and caused quite the commotion in the crowd watching the plane. I got up quickly and collected my belongings, breathed a sigh of relief my laptop and noodles weren’t destroyed when I fell, and told anyone who expressed concern that I’d been overwhelmed by the sight of the dead bodies. They were, to be honest, very disturbing at the time, before I knew Lup and Barry are Liches. I also had to deal with the revelations of the White I’d just seen; the white orb was gone from the plane’s cockpit, but I had a feeling I’d been the only person to see it there in the first place. I staggered home, taking note of my thoughts on my walk back to my apartment. By the time I’d reached home, it was around one in the morning and I had a plan for what to do next. A rough plan, to be sure, but the night was still young. I took my dinner out of its bag along with my laptop, and began eating as I sent a message to Itsy.

**Starting New Chat** with user [ItsyBitsyIncident]: [ArxVeritas] on June 6, 1:29:58 Hey, Itsy. Just had a very strange afternoon, could use your help with some issues.

[ItsyBitsyIncident] on June 6, 1:31:20 I’m all ears, Arx.

[ArxVeritas] on June 6, 1:31:50 I have two questions: First, what do you know about the plane crash at Phandalin City University? Second, how open are you to doing some freelance work?

⧖⧖⧖ I’m afraid the next little while in my story will be a bit boring, so I’m going to cut myself off there and get back to the main characters. I’ll be posting again in around a week, maybe a day late if it takes longer than I expect to interview the others. Until then, dear readers, Watch The Sky. ⧖⧖⧖ -L

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of a late update because I was camping all weekend in an area with no cell reception, but I'll be updating Sundays from here on out. I might add chapters during the week if I have a large enough backlog, so bookmark if you don't want to miss anything! Thanks so much for reading!


	3. Making Friends

**Entry Three** : Making Friends

Davenport and Merle got to the IHOP first, arriving early at 11:40. They arrived in Merle’s old green prius with the bad windshield wipers and cat litter smell, even though Merle’s never owned a cat. Merle was wearing a reddish hawaiian shirt with an old spaghetti sauce by the collar, and Davenport was wearing a crisp navy coat and grey slacks identical to what he’d worn the day before. They got seats at the same large booth by the windows they’d sat in the night before, Davenport ordered a black coffee, and they got to talking.

“Ok, Dav, I know we haven’t really talked about this alone,” Merle fidgeted a bit as he spoke, “ so I figure we should get to it before everyone arrives?”

Davenport nodded once, “So-so that’s why you drove us here early. Yeah, ok. Um, so, Lup and Barry, they’re ghosts?”

Merle chuckled. “Right to the heart of the issue. That’s you, isn’t it? Yeah, they’re ghosts I guess. We don’t know what they can do or why they’re back, but I think the white void we were in might have done that.”

“Discount heaven, right?” Davenport grinned, “The one with the assholes?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Merle waved a hand in the air, “Anyway—”

“Yeah?” Davenport interrupted.

“Yeah!” Merle chortled, and Davenport almost spat coffee out of his nose while laughing. Then they saw Magnus’ truck pull up, and Merle started waving like mad through the front window to signal him while Davenport tidied his coat.

“Hail and well met!” Magnus roared as he barrelling into the IHOP and dove into a seat next to Merle.

“Hello, Magnus,” Davenport smiled as he picked his coffee cup off the table to make sure Magnus didn’t rock the table and spill it.

“Hey, man! How have you been!” Merle gave Magnus a punch on the shoulder.

“Sleeping!” Magnus exclaimed proudly. “I’d been working for the past, uh, twenty hours I guess, before I met you guys? And then we were at IHOP for another three or four hours, so when I got home I just set a timer for noon and took a nice lil’ nap.”

Magnus yawned loudly, triggering a smaller yawn from Davenport a moment later.

“Don’t get him going,” Merle swatted Magnus, “He’s cranky if he doesn’t get his nine hours.”

Davenport surreptitiously flipped off Merle while taking a sip of coffee.

“Anyway, I have to go to work in a few hours, and I haven’t eaten breakfast, so I’m just gonna chow down on everything I can order. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day!” Magnus excitedly picked up a menu.

He ended up ordering four sides of sausage links, four sides of bacon, two cheese omelettes, and two side orders of toast. While he combined his meals into two frankensteinian sandwiches and then covered both with syrup (I know, I’m gagging as I type this, but Magnus will be Magnus) the conversation moved towards the future.

“I’m just not sure where we’re going to go with this. We all visited the White, we all heard those voices for a reason,” Davenport mused, “But we don’t—we don’t have any objectives, any knowledge about the situation. If there is, uh, a situation. Someone or something brought Barry and Lup back, gave us the vision. What did—do you guys know what  they meant about fixing us? The missing fledgeling?”

“What about the fending off that emptiness?” Merle asked. “The void, the Hunger. We don’t know what it is, when it’s coming, what to do when it gets here. Sounds great!”

“I mean, were you guys listening?” Magnus looked up from his sandwich to glance at both of the older men at the table. “We’re going to fight. They’ve given us strength so we can stop this hunger thing. That’s gotta be our purpose, that’s why we were brought together. We’re the only people who can stop this thing.”

They were silent for a moment, thinking about it. Then Davenport looked up to see Taako walk into the IHOP with a huge shit-eating grin on his face, sauntering over before sliding into the booth and grinning at everyone.

“Hey, Merle, hey Davenport, Hey Magnus, can I call you Magno? Mags? Maggy?” Taako asked blithely while folding a napkin into a floppy origami crane. Magnus nodded decisively at him before focusing his attention back at his sandwich.

“Cool. Groovy. Um, listen, I want y’all to hold on to your fuckin’ shorts, okay? Like, get set to get completely mentally and emotionally demolished, okay? Great. So, um,” Taako leaned in towards the center of the table, gesturing so the other 3 all leaned in as well to hear him as he whispered, “get this. I have _ magic powers. _ ”

There was silence, but for the sound of Magnus chewing his sandwich and people at other tables talking. Taako, annoyed, grabbed a blueberry syrup jug from the table and held it out over the center of the table menacingly.

“No, no, it’s fine. I’m a fuckin’ wizard with dope magic powers and you guys can’t even give me, like, a polite little golf clap. Fuck you guys, check this out.”

Taako held one hand out over the table, palm up, and with the other hand he began slowly pouring blueberry maple syrup down onto it. Instead of falling onto his hand, though, the syrup slowly pooled into an orb that floated just millimeters above Taako’s palm. He stopped pouring syrup on when he had an orb of approximately six inches in diameter hovering above his hand, then turned to look at a confused Magnus, Merle, and Davenport.

“Yeah, I have the power to manipulate syrups!” Taako beamed cheerfully, then sneered. “Just kidding. I can do stuff… like… this!”

With some apparent effort, Taako curled his fingers in just a little bit on the orb of blueberry syrup, and in a transformation so quick that Merle actually missed it because he was blinking, the levitating sphere was solid. Taako looked both ways to see if anyone was watching, then furtively shoved the solid ball of syrup into his purple velvet purse and resumed talking to the others.

“So, basically, I can, uh—pretty much, I can do magic. Like, you saw the syrup, you don’t need me to explain this. Shit’s wack. Oh, yeah, and Lup and Barry have something they wanted to show you guys. Hold on a sec, I’ll be back.”

Taako jumped out of his seat, ran for the door, and flashed a peace sign at everyone in the restaurant as he ran out into the parking lot.

“Wow,” Merle shook his head, “he really just took, I dunno, half of the blueberry syrup? What a jerk!”

“Hold on, I wanna have syrup powers!” Magnus pleaded around a full mouth of half-eaten food, “ I’d use my powers for good, it would be so cool. How come Taako gets the cool magic stuff?”

Davenport said quietly, “ I—well, I think we should be more concerned with the fact that anyone has powers, at all. And what they, what he can do. Magnus, this could be the strengthening the voices in the White were talking about. This could be how we fight the Hunger. Lup and Barry are ghosts, Taako’s a wizard I guess, we could actually—”

He was interrupted as Taako waltzed back in with his arms around two uncoordinated, confused young people. Lup had a garish wizard hat covering her head, and was wearing an orange v-necked shirt and red leather jacket with bright yellow bell-bottoms. And white socks, no shoes. Barry was wearing a white shirt and blue jeans. And white socks, no shoes.

⧖⧖⧖ A quick aside: as far as fashion goes, you can assume that unless his outfit has been burned off by some sort of fiery mishap, if Barry has a body he will always be wearing a white shirt and blue jeans. I suppose while I’m on the subject, I should mention that Davenport never changes out of his ‘uniform’ on off days, either, and Magnus cycles through approximately 3 flannel shirts and pairs of scruffy jeans. Merle seems to only tend towards wearing hawaiian shirts when he can help it, but I’ve never seen him wear the same one twice? Truly a mystery. The Twins are the only ones who ever really change up their wardrobes, and I’ve no clue how they used to be able to buy such clothes on just a college student budget. Oh, but I came close to veering into talking about our jobs, and that’s a spoiler, so I’ll get back to the transcribing.⧖⧖⧖

Lup and Barry lurched unevenly into the store as Taako supported each of them with an arm around their shoulders, carefully guiding them into the booth next to Davenport while he sat opposite them.

“So, I think—last time you met these goofballs, they were ghosts, right? Oh, shit, you recognize Lup,” Taako nodded to his sister in front of him, who weakly raised a hand and formed a sickly smile, “and Barry, right? Yeah, I kind of magicked them up some flesh bodies. No big deal. By the way, Davenport, can I borrow your coffee mug?

Davenport shrugged and handed his coffee mug, mostly empty, over to Taako. Taako reached out for a jug of maple syrup, poured a fair deal into the cup, and then held a hand out over the mixture for a moment and closed his eyes. A second later, he’d transmuted the syrup into coffee and began drinking from the mug like a man dying of thirst. He handed the mug back to Davenport almost as empty as when he’d gotten it, maybe a bit shorter on coffee than before.

“Where was I? Oh, god, that was nasty. Hold on.” Taako looked around frantically as he talked, then grabbed three sugar packets from the side of the table. He ripped each of them open, poured them into his mouth, and swallowed. He reached a hand out for Davenport’s mug, when the other man gave without hesitation, and transmuted the remaining coffee into milk before downing it.

“Much better. Where was I? Oh, yeah, flesh bodies!” Taako’s eyes were a bit more red, a bit more flushed than would be healthy.

“Bro, chill,” Lup tried at being flippant, beginning to flip her hair over her shoulder, before she remembered she had the wizard hat on, instead doing a little tilt of the head. “I’ll sum it up. Basically, Taako the boy wizard here can change things. States of matter, chemical composition, matter to energy and back, pretty much anything. It kind of rocks. Oh, and don’t freak out, okay?”

Lup carefully looked at everyone at the table in turn before continuing, “Taako, kind of, made these bodies for us. He, uh, stayed up all night long and magicked these old things up out of garbage. Like, actually, literal garbage. So that was cool. Barry and I possessed the flesh bodies and we’re piloting them around for practice.”

Barry piped up, “I’m still concerned with how these bodies can function. Obviously it should be impossible for Lup and I to exist in our spectre state, creating huge quantities of energy, turning invisible, moving things around without touching them. But Taako… Taako, you turned a pile of ratty sweaters and stale cafeteria food into human flesh, then sculpted it into a body and eyes, mouth, nose, nails, hair, all our features in one night. And then Lup and I possessed them, which also shouldn’t be possible, and really makes me want to raise some questions about the soul and consciousness if I thought anyone would pay attention, but I know—”

“Cha’boy ain’t got time,” Taako slurred, “for this. Taako stayed up all night, and Taako needs some goddamn naptime pronto or he’s gonna start hallucinating. I had a freshman bio textbook, some magic powers, and a handful of 5 hour energies to last me the night. Moving on, do you guys have powers?”

He looked pointedly at Merle, Davenport, and Magnus, all of whom slowly shook their heads at him.

Davenport mused, “I think we should meet again. Make this a weekly thing, biweekly? Keep up in the groupchat, try and find more information on the White and the,” he glanced pointedly at Merle, “ _ assholes _ who ran it, the powers, the orb of light, the… what are you guys looking at me for?”

“What orb of light?” Magnus asked bluntly.

“Oh, you weren’t there. It was just Merle and I, up in the plane. It was—well, I was going to say it was the strangest thing, but I guess I’ve seen ghosts today, so it was one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen. I was flying the plane just fine, cruising slowly, and then a ball of bright white light shot down from above to hover right in front of the plane. I tried to turn around it, but we ended up winging it and spiralling down to earth. Merle and I ejected before the crash, and you know the rest already. Oh!” Davenport snapped to attention suddenly and turned to Barry and Lup, “I forgot last night, but I’m so sorry. I made a huge mistake, and you two paid the price. My deepest apologies and regrets.”

He tried to bow, which he tells me he did in a dignified manner but which Lup and Taako both tell me was pretty much impossible to do while sitting down, and looked kind of dumb. It’s unclear to me to this day which testimony is the truth.

“It’s cool, dude,” Lup shrugged, “I’m pretty sure it was the light’s fault. Besides, we’re not even dead, and we have magic powers now, so we kind of came out of this way better than before. The crash… hurt… but I can fly around with Barry and haunt random teenagers now, or just live in a flesh body like before, so… we’re cool.”

Lup reached out and fist-bumped a confused Davenport as Barry nodded and awkwardly put an arm around both of them.

“I’m having a bit of trouble moving this body around, getting used to it, and I have so many questions I feel like I’m going to burst. But I’m still with Lup, and that’s all that matters to me. And also I can act like the Poltergeist and scare the hell out of people by possessing their stuff. So, yeah, I’m with the girlfriend. We’re cool.”

“We’re all cool!” Magnus cheered. “Three cheers for us!”

“Okay,  _ most _ of us are cool, and also we all treasure Barry.” Lup commented helpfully.

“Hey!” Barry acted shocked.

“I know for a fact you own superman pajamas.”

“They don’t sell denim pajamas at the local Costco, I’ve checked, and I like being dressed when I sleep in case I need to get up in the middle of the night for a drink of water and my flatmates are still up.”

“You’re a dork.”

“Your dork.”

“Oh my god, Barry.”

“It’s true.”

Taako groaned, “If it’s okay with y’all I’mma go walk back to my dorms and sleep for, like, seventeen hours? Message the groupchat if anybody finds out they can blow shit up with their mind? Cool.”  He left, grabbing a handful of coffee sweetener packets and stuffing them in his purse before walking out of the IHOP in a daze.

“I should probably go with him,” Lup explained to the table apologetically, “he has a terrible sense of direction and stayed up all night doing magic junk. I think the magic makes him more tired, and a bit crankier. Hard to tell with Taako. Anyway, peace out.”

She got up and quickly tottered after her brother, and Barry followed her without a word, giving a quick salute to the table as he passed out the door. That left Merle, Magnus, and Davenport at the table as they’d been a few minutes ago.

“They’re certainly… energetic, aren’t they?” Merle ventured.

“Sure, let’s call it that.” Davenport grumbled. “Come on, Merle, we should probably get you back to the shop before your lunch break is over. Magnus, it’s been a pleasure dining with you.”

“Later, guys!” Magnus grinned up at them over the grisly remains of 2 breakfast sandwiches as the older men left the IHOP. He remained seated by himself, ordered a milkshake, then left five minutes later, having paid with his debit card.

 

⧖⧖⧖ Not the most noble beginning for our group, but everybody needs to start somewhere, and for the Starblasters the place things really started to spiral out of control was at a window booth in an IHOP at noon, meeting for lunch. Also, Taako told me earlier to remember to write down that he does, in fact, still have the orb of solid blueberry maple syrup he made that day. I don’t have a very good memory at all, but I do keep my records, and I remembered writing that everything Taako owned had burned down in The Fire. He told me he’d kept the orb in his purse for weeks, and that was the one thing he’d escaped with. I attempted to call his bluff, and he produced the sphere from his purse with a giant shit-eating grin. As such, he now has leverage to put forth a “gag order” on one (1) embarassing story I would otherwise post about him here, and he wanted me to put that down in writing so I won’t forget. So here it is. That isn’t the best ending to a chapter of our history, I know, but Taako and Lup are forces it’s easier to just give in to. That’s probably the fourth most important lesson I’ve learned from the Starblasters. Anyway, I’ll be posting next week about that “spiral out of control” situation, so stay tuned. Until, then, dear readers, Watch The Sky. ⧖⧖⧖

-L


	4. Entry Four: A Snapshot of Domestic Bliss(es)

Entry Four: A Snapshot of Domestic Bliss(es)

Merle used to own a flower shop. It was called “Funky Flora,” and I regret that I couldn’t see it before it burned down. He and Davenport lived upstairs above the shop in a cramped apartment where Davenport attempted to write mystery novels and Merle baked shortbread cookies. Merle was downstairs tending to his succulents when he found his powers; Davenport was out buying dinner before evening rush hour. It was two days after Taako got his powers, and Merle was playing Kenny Chesney at an obscenely loud volume.

“Come on, Eli, my buddy, work with me here,” Merle crooned to a slightly wilting hydrangea. “I’m playin’ yer favorite tunes, right, lil’ guy? So you do me a solid and just, you know, grow a bit more. Just a tad, all I’m asking. It’s not easy to sell the runt of the litter, you know? But if you bloomed a bit more, I could sell you, and then I’d make some money, and you’d get to live with a nice flower lover who could plant you in a pot by the window with loads of light. This shop is too crowded for you, huh? You wanna get bought? Then you gotta bloom just a little bit more.

“Do this for Papa Merle, okay? Make me proud, and just grow. Bloom. Just—” Merle’s coaching of his hydrangea was interrupted by the sound of the ceramic pot beneath the plant splitting, cracking open and falling to the ground in little pieces.

Merle staggered back as Eli’s roots began growing longer and longer, unfurling and crawling across the room. Light blue petals expanded to the become larger than Merle was, folding around to encircle Merle. He fell to the ground and scrambled back as the flower became monstrous, looming over him and blocking his escape with petals.

“Hello… Father…” Eli rumbled through his roots, voice cracking and breaking sporadically, “What… should I… do.”

“Uh,” Merle gasped, looking around frantically, “When I said grow, I meant to like, three or four feet tall. This is great, though, love the spirit! Maybe, though, just, uh, tone it down a bit? Like… this size.” Merle held his hands four feet apart, a hopeful grin on his face. “I gotta say, though, you definitely earned some extra fertilizer for that trick. Nice going, kid!”

Eli nodded his flower slowly, then let out a piercing shriek as tendrils of root and the ends of his petals slowly ripped themselves off of him. His stem was carved sliver after sliver off until he was back to the dimensions Merle had specified, albeit with giant pieces of plant detritus around him. The process took just over a minute to complete, and Merle spent the entire time crying and freaking out. He would like me to note that “You know, Eli was like my first child, and I wanna see you stay calm while your child rips himself up in front of you! It’s heart wrenching!”

“Father… are… you… proud?” Eli croaked from the ruins of his former pot, in the center of several toppled shelves and vine tresses demolished by his growth spurt.

“Yeah, kiddo,” Merle whispered as he walked over and picked Eli’s small form up in his hands, carrying him gently to the bags of soil and extra pots in the back corner of his store, “I really am.”

Then Davenport walked in carrying his favorite shitty takeout chinese to find the store’s floor covered in dirt, giant wilting blue petals, and dessicated root segments. He had the forethought to put the takeout on the checkout counter, which was only lightly dusted with dying plant matter, before going to interrogate Merle.

“Merle, honey,” Davenport asked in an innocent voice, “Why is the shop a mess?”

“Oh, hi, Dav!” Merle looked up cheerfully from repotting Eli. “I made a plant child! You remember Eli, right? The blue hydrangea, third shelf of pots from the entrance, top of the front side? I magicked him into growing. Tell him, Eli.”

“Hello… Father…” Eli spoke at a higher pitch with his small body, sounding “disturbingly child-like” according to Davenport and “cute” according to Merle.

“Hi,” Davenport responded automatically, and a moment later, quieter, he added, “... Eli.”

“Oh, come on, Dav,  I’m sure you’ll get your powers next. Well, not sure, per se, but come on. Taako has powers, I do, those other two are ghosts, I figure it’s only a matter of time before Magnus starts breathing fire or you learn to read minds. It’ll be fun!”

“Merle,” Davenport huffed, “this is weird stuff! You made a flower sentient, and huge, and you can command it and it’s our son? We haven’t talked about having kids, this is a huge surprise! And you have magic powers!”

“Well, yeah, but are the powers really—”

“They’re only part of the issue! These abilities, these superpowers, there’s no way they’re just given to us for flashy tricks with syrup and flowers. We’re going to have to use them, we might need to hurt people. We’re going to have to fight, and we—I could lose you. Or, God, we could lose each other. We’re approaching danger at a headlong pace, we can’t keep this—” Davenport gestured at the ruined shop “secret, we can’t, not forever. But we have to, because if people know you can do magick they could get afraid or hurt you. We wouldn’t be safe.”

Merle was wisely silent, stroking Eli’s petals and listening.

“I can’t… I don’t want to lose what we have here, but I feel like any day now something like the white orb is going to come back and ruin us. I can’t write, I can’t sleep, eat, THINK with that looming over me, I just….” Davenport sat down with a thud on the floor, and Merle leaned over him to look down into his face.

“Hey, Dav, chin up.” Merle put his free hand under Davenport’s chin, raising it up to look Merle in the eyes. “You don’t want to sit down there, you’ll get dirt stains on the pants. Come on, let’s take a deep breath and go eat some chinese food. We’ll put the storefront blinds down so no one can see the mess, I’ll clean it up before bed, it’ll be fine. It’ll be fine.

Davenport stood up. “It’ll be fine,” he muttered, as Merle guided him towards the steaming hot chinese food, still secure in its bag.

“Yeah!” Merle glanced back towards Davenport cheerily. “Have a little faith, Dav! You have to be able to believe that life will work out okay in the end. I’ll fight for that faith, if I have to. And hey, you won’t lose me. Ever.” Merle grinned “We know ghosts exist now, so if it comes down to it and I die before you I’ll just annoy the assholes in Discount Heaven until they give me another shot so I can come back and haunt you.”

“Merle! Don’t joke about that!” Davenport lit up in annoyance and punched Merle in the shoulder, eliciting a light chuckle from the other man. “We do have to plan, we do have to think ahead and avoid trouble and be ready to run if we have to. No dumb stunts, no stupid bravery. We run from trouble if we’re afraid, we meet back up, we stay alive and together and safe. Got it?”

Davenport authoritatively snatched the bag of chinese food off the counter nad headed upstairs, waiting on the bottom step while Merle lowered the blinds in the windows.

“Yeah. You too.” Merle nodded once, not looking back as he adjusted the blinds.

“Yeah.” Davenport nodded after a moment as well, and Merle was beside him walking up the stairs a second later, still cradling Eli’s pot in his arm. The flower seemed to have gone dormant, swaying back and forth and making a very faint humming sound I’m told sounded similar to a dog snoring.

Davenport bumped Merle with his shoulder, careful not to disturb Eli. “Thanks,” Davenport muttered with a smile, and then they were upstairs and beginning to eat and to talk to each other in earnest.

 

Seven and a half miles away, in the sparsely lit garage where he worked, Magnus was also having an earnest discussion with someone he loved.

“Jules.” A minute passed. “Hey, Jules.”  
“Magnus.” came a response from underneath an oversized white truck after a moment.

“Do you, uh, need anything?” Magnus barely kept his voice steady.

“What would I need?” Julia asked back calmly.

“Juice? Snacks?” Magnus failed to keep his voice steady, and there was a slight but noticeable crack in his voicing of “Snacks.” Apparently he went like “sn _ AAC _ ks?” and then spat a bit while choking out another extraneous “um” afterwords.

“Thanks,” Julia sighed and rolled out from under the vehicle, her voice just a tad amused as she replied, “but I think we’re done with this’n for the day. We’re going to rotate the tires tomorrow morning, but I could use a break right now.”

“Rotate the tires?” Magnus attempted a sickly grin, raising his arms weakly to give a small shrug, “Don’t they do that already? Ha! Ha!” He literally, actually spoke out the “Ha’s” while trying to laugh, a fact which Julia will never let him forget; I am now in on this knowledge, and Julia has asked me to swear to embarrass Magnus as much as I can over this fact. I told her I’d do what I could.

Julia gave him a pity smile and just said “Yeah.”

Magnus was silent as she put her tools, leather apron, and oil rag onto the messy cart she stored all her work things on. It’s my historical conjecture that he was cursing himself and sweating bullets over his, just, absolutely awful attempt at a joke in front of the girl he liked. You’re welcome, Julia.

“Well,” Julia broke the silence with a determined edge to her voice, “That’s the last battle of the day, isn’t it? Quittin’ time! Do you wanna go out to Grisly’s and grab a bite together?”

⧖⧖⧖ An aside at Magnus’ bidding: Julia looked beautiful that night. If you’d like to avoid Magnus’ attempts at poetry, skip this interlude. Usually, I have to poke and prod and ask invasive questions to get anyone to answer my questions or describe what happened. I have to wait weeks for a moment of trust and truth where I’m welcomed into a sordid drama or old secret, and it takes me weeks longer to piece the puzzle pieces together into the story you read. But Magnus remembers Julia that night as if he had a photograph of the moment. Her hair was light brown with blonde streaks, falling over her right shoulder in a tight, messy coil after having been tied up all day for work. Her brown eyes were unusually bright with excitement, one eyebrow raised just a hair as she finished her question.  Her arms were thick with muscle and slick with sweat and splotches of oil residue or rust that matted down her hair. Her smile was wide and without reserve, top lip curled back to expose square white teeth. Her freckles were like pale stars against her chestnut skin, and a dimple on her left cheek captivated Magnus so much he only realized he had to talk when she coughed to get his attention. Loudly. For what turned out to be the fourth time. I’ll quit there and resume the history.⧖⧖⧖ 

“Sorry, uh, yes. Sounds good. Uh huh. Okay. Yup!” Magnus gave a thumbs up, then looked at his hand before lowering it quickly, concerned that was too much.

“Great. I’ll drive,” Julia hopped in to one of the cars in the garage, “ if you’ll pay for dinner. Also, we need to test this thing’s acceleration, so I might drive a little… quickly? Just warning you ahead of time.”

Magnus nodded and climbed up into the passenger seat, tightening his seatbelt securely before Julia eased them out of the garage and into the streets. She lived up to her word, almost hitting seventy on one stretch of city road with less traffic, but she was forced to slow down as they went from the edge of the city into the more congested heart. After an awkwardly silent fourteen minute drive, Julia pulled into the parking lot of Grisly’s Grub Grotto. They parked right beneath the giant neon statue of a waving pig wearing a chef outfit and eating barbecue ribs with a name tag that said “Grisly” on his chef’s apron and a arrow that said “grub” pointing to the ribs.  Julia and Magnus got out of the truck, Julia giving it an affectionate pat on the hood before walking inside. They were seated after a few minutes’ wait at a small 2-seater by the window, away from most of the crowd packed into the restaurant. Julia ordered a whole rack of ribs and a side of thick cut fries, and Magnus ordered a brisket, pulled pork sandwich, and barbecue Tilapia with a side of baked beans.

Magnus kept looking at his menu even after he’d ordered, using it as a makeshift shield to avoid having to look at Julia. She looked out the window and talked to him anyway, acting like the menu wasn’t even there.

“The moons are both so close tonight,” Julia mused, “it looks like I could just reach out and touch them. And the stars—well, the light pollution’s made them so dim they’re hard to see, but I can use my imagination.”

Magnus hid behind his menu so he wouldn’t accidentally stare at Julia. She made more small talk about the stars, the moons, and how she enjoyed that there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Magnus continued hiding behind his menu until food arrived and he was forced to give it up, at which point he kept himself safe from conversation by stuffing his face with forkful after forkful of various incredibly good barbecued meats. At last, however, he could eat no more. He regretfully set down a forkful of brisket, leaving a few bites of tilapia untouched, and had to finally look up at Julia.

She was staring at him openly, plate clean.

“Magnus, what in the world is wrong with you?” She asked curiously.

“Uhm.” Magnus responded eloquently.

“I have never, in my life, known Magnus Burnsides not to eat whatever food was served to him. We’ve worked together for, what, three years now? I’ve seen you bring—and eat, in one sitting—a whole roast duck for lunch! You literally brought a cleaver in your lunch bag to carve it up! I know for a fact that you can eat a whole birthday cake over the course of an hour, you told Steven when we wished you happy birthday last year. Are you telling me you can’t finish a few more bites of the best barbecue you’ve ever had?”

Magnus dutifully reached down for his fork to finish his meal, and Julia reached over the table to swat the silverware out of his hand.

“I’m not asking you to finish eating, Lugnuts-for-brains! I’m asking what’s wrong? Talk to me!”

“Uhm,” Magnus began, “I wasn’t really hungry…” he continued as Julia raised an eyebrow, “because I was nervous…” he gulped, “about…. you?” 

Julia nodded in encouragement, and Magnus kept going. “So, I wanted to not talk. But, we’re, doing that now, so. Hey.”

“Hi,” Julia grinned at him.

“I like you a lot. As a friend, yeah, you’re probably my closest friend in the world? So, that makes it harder to say I also like you a lot romantically. Like, I want to take you on dates and stuff. But I was worried saying something would ruin this. But I think me trying to avoid the conversation already did that? So, sorry,” Magnus rubbed the back of his neck, “I won’t do it again.”

Julia laughed. “I accept.”

“Sorry, wha?”

Julia smiled wide at Magnus, leaning forward so she was halfway across the table, looking straight forward into Magnus’ eyes. “I accept. The dates, and stuff. You’re usually so brash, hopeful and helpful and, well, heroic. I want to see more of that, not the Magnus who’s trying to hold himself back and be what he’s not. I want to spend more time with my closest friend in the world. And you’re my type, you’re cute and nice, and I could see myself really being into you. Let’s try dating.”

“Okay!” Magnus beamed, all his anxiety and fear seeming to fall away in a moment. He thought for a moment, then hunched down to bashfully ask Julia, “Wait, does that start now? Should I pick up the check? And do you still want to drive the truck home, since my truck is at my apartment? Am I messing this up already?”

Julia punched Magnus in the arm.

“Quit it, Magnus!,” she laughed, “We go dutch on the check, since I suggested the dinner. I drop you off home and return the truck to the garage. You ask me out on a real date next week, and we see how you do then.”

“Okay! For real, this time.” Magnus sighed. “You know, I was trying so hard to not mess this up. I didn’t want to change how we were, so I didn’t let myself be reckless.”

“Well, that was kind of dumb,” Julia pointed out, and when Magnus pouted she explained, “reckless isn’t how you act or something you decide on. Magnus, you’re made of reckless. It’s like asking a bird to stop flying, it’s just not natural.”

“Consider, though: penguins.”

“Oh my Lord, is this our first fight as a couple?” Julia gasped.

“I think it is. Am I winning?”

“No, penguins are pretty unnatural. They’re cute, and all, but have you seen a crested penguin? Dudes just look… off.”

“I don’t think I’ve seen a crested penguin, actually?”

“The crazy guy from Happy Feet.”

“Oh, yeah! Point conceded, penguins are adorable but they can be…”

“Yeah. Oh, hey, there’s the waiter. Are you going to finish your plate?”

Magnus used his fork as a shovel to quickly dispatch a forkful of brisket and a few bites of barbecued tilapia. He and Julia both handed clean plates to their waiter, before ordering two chocolate mousse cakes, two slices of key lime pie, two servings of bread pudding, and one extra-large Grisly’s Signature Sundae to share. They talked about extremely boring car things and far too intimate relationship things for the next half hour as they demolished their food, then split the check evenly. Julia dropped Magnus off at his apartment a few blocks away from the garage they worked, Magnus gave her a firm handshake which she turned into a bearhug, and they said goodnight to each other, both happy with how the evening had gone.

 

In a fortunately unlocked science building on the campus of Phandalin City University, Barry and the twins conducted their experiments.

“Taako, pass me another half pound of flesh or so?” Barry asked, reaching out a hand behind him.

“Barry, you’re not my dad, don’t tell me what to do?”

Lup leaned against Taako clumsily, almost knocking him over. “Bro, don’t get sassy with Barry and hand him the flesh or I’ll take some of yours?”

Taako sighed and grabbed one of the garbage bags that littered the floor of the laboratory. He reached inside, concentrated for a moment, and then pulled out a basketball sized lump of magically made human flesh which he handed to Barry. Barry nodded his thanks and turned back around to his… sculpture, let’s call it?

Barry spoke quietly as he worked, “Sorry we’re pushing you so hard, Taako, but I need a body ASAP. I have work to do, and I can’t just tell my editor I’ve lost a physical body. I have, like, two more sick days before they start docking pay, so I need a body by then.”

He spoke over Taako as Taako started “Hey now—”

“One that’s truly, truly real, Taako. The body you have me in right now is pretty much just skin held together with pixie dust. Or magic, or willpower, or whatever. It doesn’t work the way a real body should. I don’t have organs, Taako; I can’t eat, or drink, or live a real life like this. I’m just moving a puppet around.”

“Ah, you know,” Taako gestured a hand around in the air for a moment, lost for words, “that, uh, sucks ass. My condolences, dude. I’ll see what I can do.”

Lup wrapped her arms around Taako’s midsection from behind, though it took her a second to get a grip. “Thanks, dude. I’d be fine to skip classes indefinitely, but having a body that lets me eat… Taako. I miss your cooking.”

Taako perked up at that, then glared over his shoulder at his sister. “Fuck you, Lulu, you manipulative little twerp. You’ve turned my pride against me!”

Lup pouted. “Shit, I didn’t think you’d notice on an hour of sleep.”

“I can always tell when you bullshit me, Lup. Someone’s gotta keep you honest.”

Lup grinned into Taako’s back, and they stayed like that for a moment before Barry called out to Taako, “Can I have more Myelin?”

“I told you, my guy, I don’t know science shit like you do! Explain what you want at, like, a macro level, and I can try to reproduce it.”

“Ok, um, it’s this kind of plasticky whitish substance made of proteins and lipids. It’s what nerves are made of, it conducts and speeds up messages? It’s actually produced by Schwann Cells throughout the peripheral nervous system, but appears—”

“Cool. Does this work?” Taako pulled out a hunk of gooey white from a garbage bag, handing it smoothly to Barry.

“I—what, am I supposed to do a taste test?” Barry snapped out of a momentary confusion. “I have no idea if it’s okay! I can run chemical tests, but that takes time, time we don’t have, because we have to be out of here by 6 am when the undergrad students come in for Intro to Chemical Sciences. You need to get some sleep or your mental processing will take a hit—well, a bigger hit. We need to get the bodies somewhere safe. Ideas?”

Taako slurred, “I’mma magic myself back to the dorms. Flying carpet, I dunno, I’ll think something up.”

“Bad idea. Lup?”

“I have a studio to work on my graduate project, and it’s near enough to the main dorms that we can get there quickly from my place, but far enough I don’t think it’ll be investigated.”

“Oh, Lup, that’s—”

“I already have a body or two there, though, so it could get crowded.”

Barry was silent for a moment, then Lup snorted and he relaxed.

“Oh my god, Barry, you thought—Barry, you really—” Lup collapsed in tears of laughter. “You’re really a total dork!” Taako nodded solemnly.

“Okay, okay, you two. I’ll put the bodies in the duffle bags, you two stash the garbage bags back in the dumpster we got them from. Taako, we’ll drop you off at your dorm room when we’re done with the bodies.”

Taako shrugged. “No need. I’ll sleep in a pile of retro flannels at Lup’s studio.”

“Okay, then, I’ll drop you and the bodies off at Lup’s studio and take Lup back to my place for—”

Lup shrugged one shoulder, the other jerking a bit. “No need. Someone needs to keep watch over Taako and the bodies while they’re dead to the world, and I do have work to do on my final project. Besides, we can’t even get freaky in these bodies, so why go over to your place?”

Barry blushed. “Okay, I dump you all at Lup’s studio and go back to my apartment alone to sulk and miss having a working penis. And try and formulate how to create functioning bodies. And maybe find a more permanent solution to the Ghost Situation. And maybe getting some sleep.”

“Babe, sleep is for the weak and mortal!” Lup admonished him, “We’re neither!”

“Lup, you’re jittering. You don’t have fine motor control, you’re leaning on Taako to keep upright, and I know if you had more energy you’d come to my place to make fun of me instead of doing schoolwork and babysitting your brother and some bodies.”

“Well… yeah, I must be really tired, ‘cuz I would wreck you if I was awake right now.” Lup yawned.

Barry nodded decisively. “Okay then, I’ll get to packing up the bodies, you two take out the trash.”

The twins chorused in unison, albeit a bit tiredly, “Okay, dad!”

Barry sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose as he reached for a duffel bag on the floor. “Lup, that’s messed up. Taako, don’t encourage her. Have I mentioned recently that twins are creepy?”

“Yeah.” The twins nodded in unison. “Jinx. Double Jinx! Jinx agai—”

“Clean!” Barry shouted, and the twins both giggled as they set to grabbing up bags. Barry packed the bodies, and they were out of the building a few minutes before the first freshmen entered the lab.

Barry loaded everything into his sedan, drove Lup and Taako to Lup’s studio,carried the material in, and unloaded the bodies from their duffel bags and put them in the holding tanks by himself. Taako and Lup had both fallen asleep on the drive. He carried them both inside one after another, depositing Taako on a pile of retro flannels in the corner of the main studio and Lup onto an old couch across the room that was being plundered for stuffing and springs. He kissed each of them on the forehead, turned out the lights in the studio, and drove home to sulk and miss having a penis. And begin to formulate how to create functioning bodies. He didn’t find a more permanent solution to the Ghost Situation. He did get some sleep, falling asleep while sitting on his futon and working out a chemical equation on his laptop just around dawn.

Twelve miles from Funky Flora, five miles from the garage Magnus worked at, and just a few blocks from PCU, a woman had called the police at 3:53 because she’d heard a sound from the alley beneath her apartment the night before that she thought sounded like a “homeless person shagging a mongoose.” Police investigated at 6:21, found scraps of hair in the alley that were suspected to be a stray dog, and—because it was a minor disturbance— didn’t DNA test, but logged a transcript of the woman’s call and a sample of the hair in their evidence database. I hacked in, found the information, and changed my plans accordingly.

 

⧖⧖⧖ Well, I think we’ve taken a suitable break from my story, and I’m sure you’re wondering what “my plans” were, so I’ll fill you in on all of that next week. I’ll probably jump around a bit chronologically so that things make sense on your end, but it should be understandable. If the next entry doesn’t make sense to you, wait a couple entries until things really go down hill. It’s strange, looking back at where things started to go bad. I was so distant from the others, and none of us really knew each other or ourselves very well at all. Well, getting sentimental doesn’t change anything, so I’ll stop with that and get back to the good stuff. Well, maybe not all of it was good, but it was important. Anyway. I’ll get back to you next week: until then, dear readers, Watch The Sky. ⧖⧖⧖

-L

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK so this has been my favorite chapter so far and I have other stuff coming up in the coming weeks I really enjoyed writing, lemme know what you think and share this with your friends if you think they'd like it! See you next week!


	5. Entry Five: Seen the Light

**Entry Five** : Seen The Light

 

⧖⧖⧖ I ended up recruiting many more people than just Brian, much quicker than I had expected. Oh; I don’t usually forget things when I’m writing historical entries like this, but I learned Brian’s name right after I hired him. He went by [ItsyBitsyIncident] on the WTS forums, and he was the first person I contacted in regards to creating the Bureau. I wanted to call it that from the beginning, believe it or not. The name sounded…  _ right _ , somehow. Official, organized, powerful; it was everything I wanted to be.

I had a list organized on Notepad on my Chromebook of what I wanted to do with the Bureau:

**Priorities:**

-Organization ( Delegate, command, and structure the Bureau. )

-Labor ( people to find evidence, researchers, allies. )

-Information ( Talk to Allies, research, check Police records.)

-on white light, “others,” plane crash.

-Job ( Still need $ from Chronicle Job., keep turning in articles)

-$ from Bureau? Government work, freelance? Investigate.

- See a Psychiatrist about own mental health

 

I shook my head in disappointment, closing my laptop. It was morning, an abysmally early ten am, and I was beginning a hunt for evidence. It had been three days since I’d asked Brian to find what he could on flaming white fires and black glass silhouettes. Meanwhile, I was looking into the police records on the plane crash. The plane was burned beyond recognition, and the pilot had apparently escaped the crash. No one living was at the scene when the police showed up, and although bystanders reported having seen some people at the crash site, most everyone said that it was too dark to see specific details other than that there were 2 short men and 2 tall men. Not very helpful, and I dearly wished someone had approached the crash site and left with details, instead of cowering away inside.

The police were unable to identify just who had died in the crash, as the bodies had been almost completely immolated, so I didn’t know the victims exactly. I did, however, have a few leads. By taking a backdoor into PCU attendance records, I could find any students who had halted attendance for the last three days with unexcused absences. Since the crash happened near the dorms/work areas for graduate students, I checked them first, and found forty results that might work. At least half of those were chronic skippers, and most of the others I could find on social media still posting after the crash. Only two people seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth on the night of the plane crash. Taako Taaco, and his sister, Lup Taaco, both stopped work on their graduate projects and vanished.

According to her social media, Lup had a boyfriend, Barry Bluejeans, who I penciled in as a person of interest in her and Taako’s disappearances. Lup and Taako had obviously signed up at University under false names, but I was concerned about the Bluejeans fellow. Lup was a graduate student in the fashion program for her fifth year, working on some sort of final art showcase in a studio on-campus. Taako was a fourth year culinary student, having taken one year of studying fashion with his sister before shifting tracks seamlessly. He was supposed to be working on developing a cookbook of original recipes for his graduate project, but strangely enough lacked a graduate advisor, sponsor, workspace, or digital trail of anything beyond cute Instagram selfies with his sister and pictures of homemade gourmet food.

Barry Bluejeans was an enigma, and all I could find about him was an old bio on him at the  _ Phandalin Inquirer _ , apparently the fashion critic and correspondent for the Style section of the paper. The bio was written at the time of his hiring, three years ago, and I couldn’t find anything else about a “Barry Bluejeans” on the internet. I stared at the blurry picture on his page at the  _ Inquirer _ , a stout young man in a white shirt and bluejeans smiling awkwardly at the camera, scratching his shoulder and joking with someone off camera.

I felt a sense of confusion and despair. Usually, when doing research on a bigfoot sighting, a political rumor, or an old unsolved murder, I had a few avenues I could go for information. Here, I had plenty of avenues, and they were all  _ supremely _ shitty.

Option 1: Contact the  _ Inquirer _ online, or go to their offices in person, and try and figure out who the fuck Barry J. Bluejeans was.

Option 2: Try and track down the plane’s owner. I presumed there couldn’t be that many people who owned private planes in the city, and maybe I could find the previous owner trying to buy a new plane or collect on insurance for it.

Option 3: Taako Taaco. A mysterious grad student at the culinary arts program, I could find plenty of references to him online—some students and faculty were vocal about his annoyingly flashy or amazingly unique style while cooking and around campus—but not much of a record of his activities or personal life. He sounded like quite the character, but I couldn’t find any pictures of him or much extra information.

Option 4: Check out Lup’s studio, where she was supposed to be working on her final project. Not a very strong reason to suspect there would be information there, but maybe I could find something about why she, Barry, and/or Taako had been hit by the plane? Were they targeted? If so, by whom?

I decided to try  _ The Inquirer _ first, then see if I could talk to “Taako,” (I was  _ certain _ that that was a fake name)then check out Lup’s studio, then try and find the plane’s owner.  _ The Inquirer _ was the easiest to just email about Barry, then I could just hack into PCU’s student database to find Taako’s dorm room number, find his roomate there, and ask about him and his sister. I figured the studio would be easy enough to find, and I could break in through a window or pick a lock to see if Lup left incriminating documents in there or something. I decided to prioritize my least favorite task for last: finding the plane’s owners. I’ve never liked trawling through police records for information, hacking into their database for things like vehicle registration numbers is always time consuming, and it sounded like the option that needed the most door-to-door searching.

I sent a polite email to  _ The Inquirer _ .

Subject: Looking for a quote for a Chronicler Story

Dear Mr. Minsker, my name is Lucretia Dirigo, and I’m a reporter for the  _ Phandalin Chronicler. _ I’m currently seeking any information you would be willing to give me about one of your former employees, a Mr. Bluejeans, first name Barry? I’d like to learn more about him for our coverage of the tragic plane crash three days ago. Thank you in advance for your cooperation, and I look forward to speaking to you further in the future. You can contact me back at (contact information I won’t include here because you don’t need that, come on now.). Sincerely, Lucretia.

I hit send and packed my laptop into its bag. It would be a bit of a long walk to PCU campus, which gave me time to think about how to approach Taako and ask questions about his dead sister. I tried my best to put on a mournful face, but I’ve never been very good at acting, and I worried it would offend him if I didn’t show open concern for his sister’s death. I’ve never been very good at open displays of emotion, either.

It didn’t matter. I walked into the dorm building Taako was supposedly housed in, found his room number, and knocked. A kindly stoner, reeking slightly of pot and wearing only plaid boxers, opened the door holding a bag of pringles.

“Oh, hey. Are you looking for Taako or Robby?” He asked lazily.

“I’m in search of…” I hesitated a moment at his lack of clothing, then shrugged it off, “ Taako. Is that his real—”

“Iunno. Are you here to fight him or ask for his autograph?” He looked bored as he talked.

“Which one would make you tell me where he is?” I asked curiously, before realizing belatedly that wasn’t a socially conscionable answer and regretting my words.

He laughed. “Yeah, Taako’ll get a kick out of you. Honestly, I haven’t seen him for the last three days. He jumped up in the middle of the night like he’d left a souffle in the oven and ran out into the night, and he hasn’t come back since. Lemme know if you find ‘im, would you?”

“I’ll try,” I responded automatically, “but I could use more information. Does he frequently disappear like this? Does he have any places he usually hides out? Do you know anything about his sister, Lup? Anything would help.”

“Maybe, No, yes. Wait, shit, fucked up. Yes, No, maybe. I mean—okay,  _ yes _ he’s run off like this before,  _ no _ he doesn’t have anywhere he usually goes. As long as it’s with Lup, he could be anywhere. And no, I don’t know anything about her really, except she’s a fashion student and Taako’s creepy identical twin who steals him away all the time. Hope that helps.”

“Oh, it most certainly does, thank you,” I attempted a genuine smile at him. “I’ll let you know if I find Taako.”

“Thanks. Bye.” The roommate scratched his lower stomach, which I took as my cue to leave. I walked down to the campus lawn outside the dorm and took a deep breath of outside air, clearing my mind. Taako was presumed missing by his roomate. He might have died in the crash, or he could be gone elsewhere. Where could he be, where could I search? What was the plan, the plan, the plan…. 

I suddenly felt an impulse to take out my laptop, so I took a seat on a bench by the side of the walk on the lawn and pulled it out. Just after I’d powered it on and connected it to the school wifi, I got a message from Brian.

[ItsyBitsyIncident]: O.K. I got something! On white fire, not the black glass shadows.   
[ItsyBitsyIncident]: Apparently people reported seeing a strange shooting star blazing through the sky early in the night on the eve of the crash.

[ItsyBitsyIncident]:The color? Pure white. 

[ItsyBitsyIncident]:Coincidence?

[ArxVeritas]: I think not.

[ItsyBitsyIncident]: I THINK NOT!!!

[ItsyBitsyIncident]: Oh, I see you logged on. Hello there. Anything interesting?

[ArxVeritas]: I think not.

[ItsyBitsyIncident]: Ah, well, that is too bad. Let me know when you do find something important, it looks like this could be quite the case!

[ArxVeritas]: … 

[ArxVeritas]: Yeah. I think it really could be.

I closed my direct messages and got up, ready to go check out Lup’s Studio. I didn’t even  _ think _ about how I’d known to open my laptop at exactly the right time to get Brian’s message, because I was focused, and I tend to have a bit of a laser-focus on one issue at a time. Yet another of my faults, I suppose.

All it took was a short trip down to Lup’s graduate counselor to find the location of her studio. I told her I was one of Lup’s friends with a jacket of hers left over at my dorm I was looking to return, and where could I find her? I know it was a very bad excuse, but I had never been a good actress, and I used to be a horrible liar.

That’s a fault I fixed, at least.

After weathering a comment or two about how I looked “a bit young” to be a graduate student like Lup, the counselor pointed me out to Lup’s Studio, commenting that Lup hadn’t been to class or checked in about her project in a few days, and could I make sure she was okay? I agreed and set out for the studio, now with two twins to track down, dead or alive.

I arrived at Lup’s Studio around twelve thirty, stomach growling as I approached the building. It was a low, ugly brick structure, with small, thick windows high near the shingle roof. No crawling in through the windows, then. I went to the front door of the building and was heartened to see an I.D. scanner by the door. Presumably so only Lup and authorized university personell could go in and see the project, keep anyone from wandering in and messing things up.

Unfortunately for Lup, the University, and honestly myself in the long run, it was a basic proximity scanner, and I had an app on my phone that let me get through those pretty easily. It ran a simple but effective code of my own making that cycled through the most common magstrip codes on the scanned area of an ID, which it ran over the phone’s screen at several thousand patterns per few seconds. It wouldn’t work on, say, a military-grade scanner, but the local graduate school… I decided to test my luck, and pulled up the app. I held out my phone in front of the scanner and tried to hold it steady.

It took around a minute or two, but eventually the scanner turned green and I heard a click. I smiled to myself, pocketed my phone, and opened the front door of Lup’s studio.

The inside of the studio was dark, lit mostly by the mid-day light that could filter through the tiny windows. The floor was light wood, what wasn’t covered by piles of colorful fabric and black plastic bags full of garbage. The whole studio was one giant room with mirrors along the back, making it seem larger than it really was at first glance, while the side walls were a tacky zig-zag patterned wallpaper. There was a couch by the right wall with a purple blanket on it and discarded containers for a Thai delivery restaurant.

In the center of the room were two large vats full of faintly glowing green liquid. Each vat held within it a human body. I shut the door behind me quickly as I stepped inside.

“What the fuck,” I whispered into the darkness.

I immediately pulled out my notebook and began writing everything I could think of about the scene. The dimensions of the tanks and room, descriptions of the people in the tanks, time of day and location of the studio, conjecture about the bodies. The bodies. I had to get closer to get a proper look. I set down my pen and walked closer to the tanks. I peered into the clear green fluid.

Each tank held a naked younger adult, with the ages being difficult to tell due to some… issues, with their features. The vat on the left, a woman, had patches of red hair sprouting like moss out from her head, with other bits extending to thin strands several feet long that floated around her in the liquid. Her fingers were longer than they should be, just by enough to look unnatural, and her shoulderblades were too pronounced, poking out of her skin like sprouting wings. The man’s eyes were too close together, his feet and hands slightly too large and his arms out of proportion to his shoulder sockets. They were like people who’d been twisted out of shape, or a child’s approximated drawing of family. They were close enough to human to seem alright from a distance, I suppose, but they weren’t all the way there.

The word “yet” occurred to me, and I decided I had to get out of the studio. Fast. I took a few pictures of the tanks from different angles with my phone, then walked towards the door swiftly. I yanked it open and stepped out into the sunlight. I walked as fast as I could without running until I was out of view of the studio, then carefully sat down on a bench by the sidewalk to think.

Okay, so somebody had bodies in vats. In Lup’s studio. The female body could have been Lup, though she’d been blonde, not red-haired, from what her school records said. The man looked pretty similar to the picture of Barry I’d seen online. That left Taako’s whereabouts, and a grander explanation on why the fuck the bodies of Lup and Barry were in vats. Were they being mutated, were they clones grown from scratch, were they corpses being reanimated? No matter what theory I came up with, it was freaky shit, it was probably illegal, and it was definitely supernatural. Really supernatural, not one of the usual fake stories for subscribers or hits on the forums. I took a moment to process it, struggled for a moment, and decided to think about it all later. All I needed to know now was that something extraordinary was going on.

I decided to contact Brian, for one thing, then look for the plane’s owners, then post about the vats and the plane crash on the WTS Investigation board that night. I’d seen enough doctored photos and photoshopped hoaxes online to know people would believe me when I posted the real thing. Or enough would, I supposed. Bodies in vats. Good lord.

I’ll cut a long bit short for you, though it also saves me a fair bit of completely uninspired summary. I had lunch at an Indian restaurant, then I spent the day checking out the local flight school, a plane rental place a few miles away, even a few people on the outskirts of the city who rented out small planes or helicopters for day trips. None of them were missing planes. I returned home around ten disheartened; It had been a long shot, I knew, but I was disappointed the afternoon’s interviews had led nowhere. Next I would have to check out any planes in nearby Neverwinter, see if the military base there or a private citizen was missing a plane. It could really have come from anywhere, and there was no way for me to find exactly who had owned it without interviewing every person who owned a plane in the hundred miles or so around the city. I’d never before known how many fucking people own private planes for joyrides.

I got home and pulled out my laptop, ready to message my results of the day to Brian. I noticed I’d received an email at some point during my plane search, though, so I opened that first.

Subject: Re: Looking for a quote for a Chronicler Story

Dear Ms. Lucretia Dirigo, I’d like to thank you for your interest in our organization. Unfortunately, it is  _ Inquirer _ policy to not foreclose information about our staff, as I’d expect a member of another press body to recognize, even a member of the  _ Chronicler _ . I’d be happy to give you the email of Mr. Bluejeans, however: he can be reached at  [ Blu3jeans@inquirer.net ](mailto:Blu3jeans@inquirer.net) , and you can contact him yourself. Furthermore, if you were to inform me of how you made a connection between Mr. Bluejeans and the recent PCU Plane disaster, I’d personally be very enthused to hear it, as it could greatly improve my understanding of Mr. Bluejeans’ circumstances. Thanks in advance,

Evan Minsker,

Editor-in-Chief of  _ The Phandolin Inquirer _

Well, that sucked. No information available, a condescending snub about me working at the city’s most (in)famous tabloid, and a tacit admission that he had no idea what was happening to Barry. I considered emailing the address I’d been given, but then again I’d just seen Barry’s deformed body floating in a vat in an abandoned building, so….

Once more, I got to work; the one thing I was really good at. No holds barred, no reservations, no hesitation. No mistakes allowed. I knew I couldn’t find the truth alone, and I knew I’d give anything,  _ everything _ to know everything about the world around me. If that meant calling for help, begging or demanding the masses to help me? I knew I would build an army, topple anyone and anything that tried to stop me getting to the bottom of this. I’m determined; it’s one of my flaws, I suppose.

I began crafting a new board on the WTS main page, replaying every word I chose in my mind a thousand times before typing, then revising a thousand more times. I skipped dinner, and by eleven thirty I’d made something. A call for help, a desperate measure, the first smart move I’d done since beginning this investigation.

Topic: Truth-Seekers Wanted

From: WTS Forums▶The Bureau

[ArxVeritas](Moderator)(Expert Astronomer)(The Director) on June 8, 23:72:38:

I’m in a bit of a tight spot. I think I’ve stumbled upon a mystery that’s too big to handle on my own, and I need people I know are smart, dedicated, and paranoid as hell. I need allies, because this is going to be a doozy of a case. I need you. I’ve posted all the information I’ve amassed below, as well as a google form for people to sign up as Seekers and to help me go through encrypted police records, mountains of census data, and on-the-street tracking to find the truth. I don’t know how to ask any better than this; those of you who’ve messaged me before know I can be a bit… well, I find social interactions difficult to master. But if you work with me, I’ll be there for you. If you want to be a part of something bigger and find the truth, let me know. I’m ready to get to work.

Keep Reading

I sat back and looked at everything I’d written. I posted pictures of my journals for the past 3 days, as well as the pictures of the tanks. I censored the important bits of the naked vat bodies with black bars, so as not to be crude, but other than that I was adopting a policy of radical honesty in this endeavor. For the most part. I wouldn’t tell people my name or personal address, I left my account of seeing the White Light purposely vague, omitting the out-of-body experience entirely, and I gave out a burner email, not my personal. It’s best to be cautious when embarking on a business endeavor with posters on a conspiracy theorist website, and Watch The Skies was a lovely set of forums with some truly disturbed individuals. I think it says alot about where I was at that I went to them for help.

With the toughest work for the night done, I got up from my futon to stretch my legs and make some dinner. I had a fried egg, some toast, and two bags of chips, and then I got back to work. Somebody had to do it, after all.

 

⧖⧖⧖ I’ll admit, I’m still proud of the Bureau, even after everything. It felt good to be proactive and challenge myself at something I knew I was bad at. I thought it was the beginning of something very important, something that would help people and discover the hidden truth. It did that and more, eventually. I couldn’t be prouder of Brian and the WTS forum members, Carey, Killian, Maureen, and everyone else who would help me make the Bureau. None of you knew how great or terrible this would all turn out, but without you I never would have found the family I have today, and for that you all have my sincere thanks. Anyway, next chapter I’ll be recounting the events that led to the Burning of Phandalin. At least a few of those were, perhaps, indirectly my fault. Maybe most of them. You can judge next week. In the meantime, dear readers, Watch the Sky⧖⧖⧖

-L

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a day late! I've ruined the schedule already! Next week should be on time, though it might be tough on my backlog, I'll try and make sure I have something to post every sunday from now on. Check in then, comment/kudos if you liked it, and tell your friends to read this! Every comment/kudos makes me feel more Valid and increases the likelihood I actually stick around long enough to finish the first arc of this goddamn story. See you next week!


	6. Entry Six: A Few Notes

Entry Six: A Few Notes

I’ve realized it might be beneficial for you to get to know the members of The Starblasters. I’ve been telling you our story as I know it, from the accounts I’ve heard and the events I’ve witnessed since we began manifesting our powers. I think this story will help the public see just who the people behind the masks are. Well, Magnus is the pretty much the only person who wears a mask these days, but you get the idea. I’d like to let each member of The Starblasters tell you a bit about how their lives led them to join the team, how they decided to do what they do now, and generally host a little “getting to know you” interview segment on here. My historical posts should resume as usual next week.

 

 **Taako** : Hey, it’s ‘chaboy. Okay, we’re doing backstories, right? Mine’s a fuckin’ doozy. Uh, basically, Lup and I were really fucking cool as kids. We weren’t the smartest kids in our classes, but we were the craftiest, and we were pretty sharp. We picked up skills quick, worked together, and tore down anyone who tried to stop us. Or annoyed us. I would be the distraction, she’d be the plans, we’d keep each other balanced. We came from some shitty parents who didn’t really like us all that much, so we kind of left them when we were… seventeen? No, the day before our seventeenth birthday. I made Lup a huge cake out of stolen ingredients from our Home Ec class.

We couch-surfed at friends’ houses for a few months, applied to college a year early, and started out our first year at Phandalin City Community College double-majoring in fashion and culinary arts. Lup got suspended, like, seven or eight times, and I made some really bad dating choices, but we made it out of undergrad alive. We barely managed to pay our ways by cooking and designing shit for people, though it’s hard as fuck living off an Etsy store and an illegal, ameteur food truck alone. We basically ate rice and beans for every meal, and could only ever get clothes from Goodwill. Even then, we could only pay tuition by taking out some shady loans which were… a real struggle to deal with for a while there. It sucked.

In grad school, though, we managed to get huge scholarships for graduating at pretty near the top of the class in our majors, coming in like fourth and fifth of the graduating class or something. We had a knack for cheating, stealing answers, calling in favors, and, when all else failed, actually studying really hard and learning the material. We both decided to focus in fashion during grad school, then I dropped out after 6 weeks because I realized food was where my passion lied. Lay? Anyway, I ran my illegal food truck for the next 8 months to build up a fund for buying a house after grad school, and Lup slept in the studio she worked at so she wouldn’t have to rent a place.

I re-enrolled in culinary arts in the fall, and we did grad school and kind of crushed it, I guess. Lup met Barry at some fashion show and fell madly in love and they’ve been a thing for a while. I sort of third-wheeled half of their dates and then Lup told me to stop so I did and it was a drag. I channelled that raw emotion of, like, being left out into a quiche recipe, and it went to national level quiche competitions. Did you know they have those?

Sorry, Taako’s rambling. Uh, yeah, I was kind of bummed out that Lup sort of left me behind when she started dating Barry. Then some dramatic shit happened, way too personal to get into, and we were all best friends and I love Barry like a brother now, and we literally, actually all get pedicures together. Not super often, because we’re all busy people, but often enough that it’s a regular thing.

Then Lup and Barry got hit by a plane on one of their dates during our last year of grad school, and I think you know the rest. Or enough of it, at least. See y’all on T.V.; peace out!

 

 **Magnus:** Okay, so ever since I was a kid I’ve always wanted to make the world better. I went around on Halloween with those little Unicef boxes for pennies. I think I was too naive back then, but I was a cute lil’ tyke. I gave, and I gave, and I gave.

I grew up and I realized I needed to focus some more on Magnus, ya know? I was doing too much for other people, and I noticed I’d never made myself into a person. Around junior year of high school, I realized I had no friends, no future, and no personality. Okay, that sounds bad, lemme walk that one back a bit. When I was a kid, I was _too_ nice, ya know? I stood up to bullies and volunteered at the animal shelter and had a bajillion people who liked me and no one who was, like, special. So I spent senior year, kind of…. overcorrecting.

Hey now, don’t look at me like that, Lucretia.

I kind of wanted to spend some time on the wild side, and I took up… um… *indiscernible coughs* Oh. Louder? Hmm. Street racing. Yeah, really. I wanted to try being a criminal racing boy. Fun times, I gotta say. Yeah, so I did illegal street racing in high school. I stopped when I went to vocational school to be a mechanic. Oh, Automotive Engineer. Sorry, Julia’s kind of stuck on that one. Speaking of Julia! We met in vocational school ‘cuz we were in some of the same classes, and when I graduated she told me her dad was hiring at his garage, and I asked him for the job, and he said yes. So I got the job! I also started back on volunteering in my spare time, so I worked as a volunteer lifeguard, I helped out at the local animal shelter, I sorted books at the library, and a lot of other junk. I tried to find balance, though, between Magnus the Force of Good and Magnus the Person With Needs. I think I was doing good. I was working, volunteering, and trying not to spread myself out too thin. I really enjoyed my time working with Julia, both because I was totally in love with her since, like, a month after I met her, and because the work with cars was really rewarding. It’s nice to just start working on a car and let hours pass tinkering and fiddling with your hands in mostly silence.

So things were good. After Julia and I started dating, things were great. That, I dunno, two weeks or so, was probably the best period of my life. Not counting now, of course! Now’s pretty great, too. I’m a big fan. At the time, I was certain Julia and I would be together forever, so that was pretty easily the best. I was worried I’d fuck things up, but I learned to get more comfortable with just saying what I thought and being who I was, recklessly jumping into any conversation with Julia knowing she’d never hurt me. I think she liked that she knew I would never hurt her, either, and we were just really gentle with each other as we adjusted.

The honey-moon phase couldn’t last forever, though, and we had our first fight right after—Oh, come on, Lucretia! This is the good part! We can’t leave the readers in suspense! No, no, you’re right. You don’t need to go get Julia. I’ve gotta go soon, anyway, it’s almost lunch time. Tell your readers hi and I love them! I’ll see you later, bye! Oh, no, you can end your transcription now, I’m—

 

 **Merle:** I met Davenport while I was attending Divinity School, back in ‘81. Well, I was on summer break from Divinity School, but I was enrolled. I hadn’t attended most of my classes last semester, but I was enrolled. I was on vacay at the beach in California with my girlfriend at the time, lovely tall woman studying to be a nun. She was a beaut, but around a week into summer vacation we figured out we weren’t really, how you say, compatible. With each other’s genders. It was a bit of a rough time, but we helped each other get through it alright, which was good, and we stayed friends. We slept in the same motel room by the beach, but I took the sofa and she took the bed. I have my chivalrous moments. She spent every day of the vacation walking the beach looking for shells, and I fell in love with Davenport.

Dav was on forced leave from the Air Force after having an anxiety attack while instructing some pilots, and was on strict orders to “cool off” for a week or so unpaid leave before coming back. He would just sit at the beachside bar of the resort and order a Pineapple Watermelon Strawberry martini. He’d stay on that one seat at the bar, sip a bit of his drink every few minutes, and watch the waves silently. He was severely out of place, wearing his flight instructor uniform and drinking a pink and yellow drink while staring out to sea while people moved around him like water around a rock. He looked lonely, and I was bored, so I decided to go over and chat with him one day.

“Hey,” I said as I jumped up onto the stool next to him, “you come here often?”

He turned from his perusal of the beach to stare at me coldly with flat, lifeless green eyes. They were like pressed leaves, captured close to death and preserved eternally. His gaze bored into my skull. He didn’t look away, didn’t blink, didn’t respond at all. He just… stared.

“Do you have a sunburn, or do you always look this hot?” I asked in a grizzly tone.

He answered with silence.

“I feel like I’m drowning in your eyes. Do you know mouth-to-mouth?” I asked in my best innocent voice. I saw one of his eyebrows twitch.

I got desperate, trying out, “ _Water_ you doing alone, looking this good? I couldn’t _sand_ it if I didn’t ask you out. I was _sunned_ by—”

“Those don’t even work!” Davenport finally piped up, his tone a mix of amused, interested, and very annoyed that I tend to inspire in him from time to time.

“It’s summer vacation, baby; I don’t have to work, and neither do my pickup lines.” I chuckled at my own wit.

“No, but those last three were just puns. Also, you’re getting sand on your stool, and I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to wear a shirt in the bar. And shoes.”

I groaned, “We’re at the beach! I’m wearing a bathing suit, come on!”

“There’s a sign on the door,” Davenport pointed out, then literally pointed to a sign on the door as he read aloud, “No shoes, no shirt, no service.”

“If the bar won’t service me, will you?” I winked.

“That’s really, really bad,” he said, but he blushed while he said it.

Now, I have never been a man given to sentiment. But, well. Shit. He looked _really fucking good_. I’m talkin’ dark freckles over a slight blush, dimples, curly red hair, cute green eyes that had a little bit of life in them, now, and of course the flight instructor uniform. He wears that thing pretty much all the time, but I never get tired of it. There’s just something about a man in uniform that—okay, I’ll shut up. Jeez. Anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah, really bad.

So, I saw him look really cute, and I did something I almost never do and asked, “Wait, shit, are you gay?” because I wasn’t thinking at all. Not like I think before most of what I say, mind, but… okay, I dunno where I was going with that.

He shook his head ruefully. “Military.”

Now, this was the early eighties, and the military was… well. I knew what he meant. And I had just found out I was gay a few days ago, so it wasn’t like I had the highest expectations with my first time asking a guy out. Still, I didn’t want to give up. I’d had some measure of success picking up chicks in divinity school, which is pretty much hell for a young guy on the prowl, and I wanted  to see if I still had it once I’d gone gay. I mean, that sounds dumb, but you get it, right? I had to test the ol’ Merle Mojo.

“Riiiiight,” I said, nodding, “that sucks. Can I have your number?”

He shook his head, paused for a second, then laughed and shook his head again. “That’s some determination you have there. No, I’m… I’m currently between assignments, so I don’t have a home phone number. Or a home. I have a PO box, though, and the Air Force forwards my letters to me when I change stations. If you’re that desperate, you can have that.”

“Desperate?!” I gasped, a hand flying to my chest in a show rage, “You wound me, sir! I can’t believe you’d even say that!”

I jumped off my stool haughtily, walked over to the end of the bar, and quietly asked the barkeep if she had a pencil. She had a red ballpoint pen that was low on ink, which I borrowed with thanks before walking back to Davenport. I grabbed a bar napkin on my way back.

“So, what are those digits?” I asked as I jumped back on the stool, pen poised to write on napkin, “Are they called digits if it’s a PO Box, or is it an address? Ah, forget it.”

I guess I balanced my annoyingness with charm well enough, because he squeezed the bridge of his nose in defeat and rattled off his PO box number after a brief pause.

“You’re buying me another round of drinks for that information, you understand,” Davenport sighed, “because that information was highly classified.”

I nodded as fast as I could. “Noted. I won’t even make a joke about how you can’t spell classified without ass, because it would take too long to think about how to make that work. Barkeep, another round of whatever the short ginger’s having! And I’m keeping the pen!”

I paused and turned back to Davenport, “Oh, sorry, I seem to have forgotten my manners somewhat. My name’s Merle.” I tipped an imaginary hat at him.

“Only somewhat?” Davenport raised an eyebrow, “Well that’s terrifying. Lieutenant Davenport O’Droi, at your service.” He did a little half-bow off his stool.

I opened my mouth. “And please,” he continued, head rising, “I don’t need a quip about anyone servicing anyone else.”

I shut my mouth, and decided that Davenport and I would be good friends.

Ah, shit, that’s all? Are you sure you can’t stretch this out a bit longer? I didn’t get to half the things I wanted to talk about. The rest of that week, our first kiss, our long-term relationship, getting married. I didn’t even talk about my childhood, or opening the store, or—

Fine, fine, I’ll stop. But don’t come crying to me when your readers are confused about the sudden appearance of my evil cousin, or my estranged ex wife, or my long-lost—

⧖⧖⧖ I cut off Merle here because of potential spoilers. Ignore his last paragraph or so.⧖⧖⧖

 

 **Barry:** I’ve always been a bit of a nerd, I guess. I was president of the Science Club in middle school, I was bullied relentlessly because of it, but then I bulked up a bit and I got left alone, and I just kind of left everything I hated about my childhood behind for college? Like, I was bullied and had no friends, and it sucked, but I never let it get between me and what I loved. I put myself into the work, dedicated to my science for a few years. I got a degree in chemical engineering while balancing a heavy schedule of also being a pretty okay rugby player and an avid poet, and then I couldn’t find a job and I couldn’t afford graduate school without one.

My parents are lovely people, but they live in a retirement village in New Hampshire and all of their money goes towards making sure they don’t go broke or get kicked out or something. So I had to swallow my pride and get an internship at the _Phandolin Inquirer_. As a poet, I kind of hated the way we had to write so formulaically, but as a scientist I challenged myself to find a formula and make it all make sense. I found the correlations between key buzzwords in article titles and good feedback, I identified who to curry favor with in the office if I wanted to have a good day. I did my best to put all of my energy into succeeding, even though it was a supremely boring internship, because I knew I had no other choice.

I got hired as a contributing journalist after just over a month of internship, which is good because until then I’d been living in my friend Avi’s dorm room at PCU and walking a mile to work each day. With the budget of a journalist, I saved up enough over a year or so to rent an apartment with a few friends from undergrad, and I put the rest into stocks. The stocks, and some very diligent saving for a year or two, meant I could have quit my job and go to graduate school for chemical engineering like I’d wanted too, but I found I’d grown to love the job at the _Inquirer_. I found I was good at it. I ended up getting a position as the head journalist of the Fashion section just five years after getting my first job at the paper. The fashion section was trash, and the old lead writer had quit 3 months before, leaving the position vacant, but I didn’t mind.

As head (and only) fashion writer, I went to fashion shows throughout the city and wrote about the newest trends, I critiqued celebrity style, and I talked about clothes a lot. I mainly googled how to talk about fashion and bullshitted the rest, but I’ve always been a quick study and I managed to not get fired.

I met Lup at a runway showing a year and a half before we became Liches. I was in front row seats with my press pass, and she was in the seat behind me, wearing an ethereal purple scarf, bright blue skin-tight leggings, and a black T-shirt that read “mourning my good sense” in white text. She threw popcorn at one of the models and yelled at her to grow a spine and show some flair. She was kicked out by security, and I followed her out and gave her my number on the street in front of the auditorium the show had been in.

She told me, “You look like God and the Pillsbury Doughboy tried to make a man out of denim, but blindfolded. Where did you even buy a denim hat? They let you in here wearing that?”

I told her, “I kept in in my jackpack. The, uh, Jean backpack. Get it? ‘cuz—”

She laughed really, really hard, and I knew she was the one for me.

So she gave me her number, and we texted, and it turns out she’d been wearing an outfit of Taako’s to the event and had yelled at one of her classmates who she was great friends with, like, as a joke. Lup’s a bad enemy to have, but I think she might be a worse friend. We began dating casually after a year or so of torture when I finally worked up the courage to ask her, then a bit more seriously, then we were practically always together when I could get away from work and she didn’t have class. Then we had the whole Taako issue, but we got that sorted out pretty well. Then things were… peaceful, actually.

Then we got hit by the plane and got magic powers. Uh, I think that’s the end of the story, or at least this part of it. You can tell the rest.

 

 **Davenport** : My story, huh? Well, I guess it started when I met Merle in the summer of ‘81. He was—Oh, he did? Where did he leave off? Great. Hold on a second, let me think. Got it. Well, the forced leave without pay had to end at some point. I was called back from my steamy summertime bromance with Merle, and assigned to an air force base in Germany. I was a flight instructor for new pilots working on getting their license. It’s a stressful job, being in charge of forty or more adult-sized toddlers with giant flying death machines and no memory for safety training who always throw around gay jokes and can’t keep still for a moment or quiet and who—sorry. It was… difficult. But I wrote to Merle when things were difficult, and he wrote back, and that made everything so much easier.

He got kicked out of divinity school a few months after returning from summer break. It surprised no one, considering Merle was a gay stoner who didn’t believe in God and cursed all the fucking time. That was a joke, for your record; I rarely curse in casual conversation. Merle’s a bad influence. Where was I, again? Ah, yeah. Well, Merle worked as a lifeguard for a few years at the resort he’d met me at, then just kind of moved around for a few years doing odd jobs and writing me from motels on stained stationary about his week. He’d settled down by ‘89 or so. By settled down, I mean he came into the possession of the deed to a small flower shop, with no memory of how he’d gotten it, after a wild weekend with some old-school hippies. He set up shop, put down some roots.

Sorry, that was a bad one. Merle’s influence.

I’d spent the last eight years just managing my stress, doing my job, and keeping up with letters from Merle. Oh, and at Merle’s encouragement I decided to take up something creative. He whittled or carved wood to relax, but I found writing to be more soothing to me. I wrote during every free moment, back then, either letters to Merle or stories to help relieve anxiety. I left the military in the fall of ‘91 with the drafts to six novels, three children’s books, and one screenplay to my name. I grew an amazing mustache when I realized the military couldn’t tell me what to do anymore, which I proudly take care of to this day. I also had a reasonable amount of money from my distinguished career of military service, and nowhere to go.

I’m not usually a man of impulse, but I wrote a letter to Merle the week before I left the military. We’d been penpals writing each other weekly or biweekly for nine years, now. It still amazes me; we had one weekend together, and we hadn’t even kissed because Merle had been gay for a week and I was in the military, and that fueled a written romance that lasted almost a decade. My friendship—no, that’s a lie, my love for Merle was one of the few things I could lean on in tough times. I truly treasured it.

So I asked him if I could move in when I got out of the military. It was the first time I would have seen him in person since ‘82. He agreed, met me at the airport, and we kissed for the first time at the unloading conveyor belt. We must have held hands for a week straight, and it was really nice. A year after I moved in with him above the shop, to the day, he proposed, and we got engaged. Thirteen years after that, we got married as soon as Obergefell v. Hodges went through the Supreme Court. I published all of my work online and kept writing, now as a full time job. It’s rewarding work, and disciplined, and I like to think I’m good at it. Writing helps me organize myself, and at the time it gave us some valuable cash flow when people weren’t buying flowers.

It was such a shame when the place went and burned down. No, leave that in, it isn’t a spoiler. You mentioned The Burning of Phandalin as early as entry three, and brought it up again in entries four and five; in the beginning of entry five, you specifically mentioned that our shop burned down. Yes, of course I read it! From one writer from another—actually, you should probably turn off the recorder before talking shop. Yes, that was all I had to say.  


**Lup:** Hey, Lucretia. How’re you? Doing pretty good, excited about the interview. Yeah, I’m ready now. Okay, so first thing’s first. Taako and Barry are full of shit and also dumb, and I want to make sure you put that in your blog posts or historical asides or whatever. I love them to death, I really do. But come on. Neither of them told you about our drama during my second year of grad school, and now I have to do that. See, it was all Taako’s fault. He felt supremely shitty, with good reason, since I basically abandoned him when I met Barry.

I’d never hurt Taako. Not if I thought about it first, at least; he’s the other half of my heart, my favorite person in the whole world. But I didn’t really think I was leaving him behind when I spent time with Barry, I thought of it as… an opportunity for growth. For both of us. I wanted us to be able to love other people and live lives outside of just the two of us. Obviously we’d stay together forever, but I wanted to try seeing what independence was like. It turns out, it totally sucks.

Not only was Taako hurt by me ditching him for my new boyfriend, but I missed Taako whenever I was out on dates or spending time hanging out with people who weren’t him. We were like little chihuahuas with separation anxiety, but it was all the worse once I realized it existed. Like, once I got thinking about how stressed I was when Taako wasn’t around, I’d get more stressed thinking about it, until I snapped and yelled at someone or took a really hot shower or ran until I fell down from exhaustion. He holed himself up in his dorm room, turned in his coursework online if he could and failed any projects he’d have to send in in person. I don’t think he spoke a dozen words for the month or so that I tried the independence thing.

Barry ended up being the one to fit us back together again. He took the worst of my storms, and he was sick of my shit, so he marched me to Taako’s dorm room, used a power drill to open the door when Taako didn’t answer after a few knocks, and made us make up and promise to keep in touch and spend time together even if we went our separate ways in life. Taako’s promise was groggy, since we’d woken him up storming in with a power drill, but it was still a promise. After that, he and I went back to having Sibling Mayhem Monday hangouts together, and he and Barry would occasionally get together and whisper secret junk about me behind my back, and Taako would occasionally come along with Barry and I when we went to see a movie or yell at grad school friends in community theater or something. He hates fashion shows, though, because he always thinks he can do better than the professionals. He’s right, of course, but he doesn’t have the grace to keep his mouth shut during the show.

Speaking of keeping mouths shut—actually, nevermind. The world’s not ready for that secret. Um, sorry my story was kind of short, I did leave out possibly the biggest part of that drama, but it’s not my story to tell at that point. I’ll make it up to you, though! I’ll tell you what I really did to cause the Burning of Phandalin. I haven’t told anyone but Taako what actually happened, because it’s a doozy, but I feel like you need to know. Everyone needs to know the truth. If people want to hate me afterwards, that’s fine, but I should probably stop lying to people. Oh, and I’ll buy you an ice cream sandwich. The ones with the actual chocolate chip cookies on the outside, your favorite. That and a confession to Grand Fucking Larson. That should make up for telling a shitty background story, right?

⧖⧖⧖I hope these stories gave you more of an insight into the other members of the team, let you understand us a bit better, or just made you smile. If you’d like another segment of interviews with the Starblasters like this, comment below which hero you’d like to hear from next! Of course, I’m here every week, so I suppose I’m an option as well if you’d like to hear more from me. As for legitimate historical information, next week I cover the Burning of Phandalin. It was a bit of a hectic time, but I’ll try to make it all make sense as I tell it. Until next week, dear readers, Watch the Sky.⧖⧖⧖

-L

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WELL this chapter went a bit longer than I planned and the next one is taking a while to right but 1) I hope you like it and 2) I really hope I manage to push chapter 7 out on time, though even this one came a bit close to late for my usual deadline. ANYway I gotta get back to writing ASAP, see y'all next week!


	7. Entry Seven: Sparks

Entry Seven: Sparks

 

It was the morning of day six since the plane crash. Julia was eating pancakes at the garage while Magnus scolded her.

“Julia. Jules. Julifer. Jelly bean. Julie.”

“I’m listening,” she responded gruffly around a mouthful of buttermilk pancakes, leaning against a wall and watching Magnus pace and gesticulate.

“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It gives you energy, wakes you up, fuels your whole morning. You gotta get a balanced breakfast. You gotta!” Magnus waved his hands for emphasis as he talked.

Julia shrugged. “I usually wake up, shower, and walk over here to get to work right away. Sometimes I bring a protein bar. We have an early lunch, it’s—”

“It’s not fine, Julia!” Magnus wheeled on her. “I mean, it is, in the grand scheme of things, but you’re missing out on bacon, bear claws, biscuits, cereal, cinnamon rolls, coffee cake, croissants, danish, eggs, hash browns, huevos rancheros, muffins, pancakes, sausage, scones, strudel, and waffles!”

Julia put down her plate so she could clap at Magnus’ speech, which he’d taken without pausing for breath, and he nodded at her in appreciation as he continued talking. “And I can’t keep bringing breakfast to work for you, because it gets cold on the walk over so it doesn’t taste as good.”

Julia nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, yesterday’s pain au chocolat was a bit cold. Still liked it, though!”

Magnus smiled brightly. “Thank you! That’s not the point!” He stopped pacing for a moment. “I’ve been bringing you breakfast the last few days to acquaint you with the wonders of a good morning meal, but it takes a lot of unnecessary time to go out, buy the food, then come to work and give it to you.”

“You’re gonna stop giving me breakfast?” Julia mock-gasped, then shut her mouth when pancake bits came flying out.

Magnus shook his head like a bull. He opened his mouth to say something, seemed to think better of it, and closed his mouth. He nodded to himself, whispered “okay, Magnus,” quietly enough he thought Julia couldn’t hear him (she informs me she could), and looked Julia in the eyes.

“I was thinking we could go on a breakfast date?” He asked boldly.

Julia nodded slowly, then took another bite of pancake. “Sounds good,” she managed, garbled, “maybe at IHOP? We can go tomorrow before work, maybe forty minutes before we need to clock in.”

“Well, I was thinking more like the fancy cafe a few blocks down with the really good hazelnut cappuccino,” Magnus mused, “but the IHOP has chicken and waffles. And milkshakes 24/7. Yeah, let’s go with IHOP. It’s a date?”

“Sure,” Julia grinned, setting down her empty plate, “it’s a date. Now, I’ve been slacking off and eating on company time, so we should probably get to fixing shit up and talk about dates and stuff later.”

“Okay.” Magnus nodded and went over to a toolbench to get ready for work. He called over his shoulder at Julia, “Also, and I swear I don’t understand how this happened, you got some syrup on your shoulder. You might wanna clean that up. Also, I changed my mind, do you think we could get to IHOP closer to an hour early so I can order the all you can eat buttermilk pancakes and clean the place out? I have a reputation there.”

“Magnus?” Julia spoke from right behind him, and he turned to see she’d walked up behind him while he was talking. “When I said I wanted you to be yourself, rushing in and being bold and talking more… this is what I meant. I really like this. Dating and stuff. So far, at least.”

“Me too.” Magnus smiled tenderly and reached for Julia’s hand.

“That being said…” Julia squeezed Magnus’ hand warmly, “we need to get to work or my dad is going to fire us both.”

“Oh,yeah!” Magnus jumped, gave Julia a quick awkward handshake, then let go of her hand to grab tools and his leather apron for work. The whole day, Julia and Magnus cast secretive glances at each other while they were testing engines, fixing leaky pipes, and rotating the wheels of cars that came in and neither thought the other was watching. From a purely objective standpoint, looking back, I can resolutely say this was probably very adorable. It’s a real shame the garage had to burn down so soon after. But I shouldn’t tease any more, the fire starts later this chapter, I’ll hurry things along so we’ll get there quickly.

  
  


Davenport discovered his powers later that same day, soon after visiting an old acquaintance from the Air Force to apologize. 

Davenport walked along the pristine sidewalk, eyes drawn to the picturesque flower beds on either side of the walk. Verdant green grass sprouted along identical lawns as far as he could see, and cloned tudor houses sat in rows upon cute cul de sac after cute cul de sac. He stopped when he heard a southern accent call out in jubilation.

“Lieutenant!” Davenport winced and turned to give a little wave to the middle-aged woman calling out to him from the antebellum porch of an expansive mini-mansion, “How’s it all? Come ‘round to talk, did ‘ya? Get up here!”

“Hey, Noelle?” Davenport called out anxiously, “I, uh, need to talk to you.”

Noelle waved Davenport over to a seat beside her on the porch, and he gingerly sat on the stairs next to her, looking out over the suburbs.

“Ya’ don’t come out here often, do you, little man?” Noelle grinned down at Davenport, “You’re missin’ out! The big city might have all them fancy jobs and coffee shops, but out here we got plenty of space and good company. You should visit more!”

“Noelle,” Davenport began gently, “you live fifteen minutes from the city center, at most. I just took the Metro out here, it’s really not that far. Anyway, I wanted to talk to you about—”

“Aw, Lieutenant, is this about the plane?” Noelle asked in concern. Davenport froze.

“Shucks, man, don’t you worry none ‘bout that. I got that plane long time ago, used it good, and I figure it's time just ran out. I’m glad you survived the crash.” She looked up when Davenport jumped, then grinned at him. “Yeah, I know about the crash. News is trying to keep it hush-hush, somebody just up and crashed a plane into the college campus and no one knows who. Don’t want to be spreading fear, and they wanna find a lead or somethin first. Don’t look so surprised, now! Just ‘cuz I retired from the military don’t mean I don’t keep my ear to the ground. I have a cousin on the ‘force, she let me know what’s going on over that way.”

“Noelle,” he murmured, “thanks for being so discreet about this. I’m really sorry about your plane, and I appreciate everything you’ve done for me. Please, let me know if there’s anything I can do to make it up to you, captain. I mean, Noe—”

“Hey, now!” Noelle shouted gleefully and wrapped an arm around Davenport’s shoulders, squeezing him tightly so he couldn’t breathe for a moment before relaxing her iron grip, “Don’t call me captain! You helped me out in the service plenty, I helped you out plenty. You helped me steal a plane for the Redcheeck family… private business, I lend it out to you on occasion. You crash it, I get a cousin to hide the evidence in return for a favor. The Redcheeck family returns favors, mmmkay, Davenport? We help out our friends.”

“Mmm….mmmkay, Noelle.” Davenport nodded, “I’ll keep a lookout for a way to make it up to you. And thank you. And, umm, thank you to the Redcheeck family. Now, I gotta go check in with Merle about… plants, so—”

“I get you, you wanna go leave big ol’ mafia boss Noelle and go be with your lil’ husband. Well, okay then, scurry off now. I’ll be seeing you later, or get another cousin to check in on you two. We’ll find something for you to do. Oh, and one last thing, Davenport?”

Davenport, already stepping up from the porch, slumped back onto the stairs.

“Next time you hurt any kids, even by accident, I’m havin’ a cousin turn you in. We’ll take care of Merle for you, but we ain’t doin’ business with someone who hurts kids. I’m givin’ you one more shot, hear? Don’t go gettin’ in any more accidents. Have a good day, now!”

Noelle waved cheerfully as Davenport speedwalked back to the sidewalk and towards the nearest metro station. From the window of every nice suburban house for the next block, a pair of Redcheeck eyes was at the window, watching. The Family liked to keep tabs on its assets.

 

“Ah, fuck, Merle,” Davenport groaned, “I think we owe the mafia a debt.”

The two of them were talking at the threshold to the shop as Davenport was taking his shoes off, around six thirty in the evening. The shop was closed, the streetlights outside illuminated the darkening twilight, and Eli was sitting by the radio toying with the volume dial idly.

“You went out to talk to Noelle!?” Merle shouted incredulously, then threw a guilty glance over his shoulder at Eli before whispering, “Really? She’s gonna break our kneecaps with a baseball bat one of these days, I swear to God. Also, don’t curse around Eli. Our plant son is delicate.”

“You’re right, my apologies,” Davenport acceded, “I’ll watch my profanity. Also, perhaps more importantly, Noelle thinks I killed two college kids in a plane crash and now we’re on her hit list? I suppose I did kill them, but I couldn’t exactly tell her that they’re fine, now, could I?!”

“Wait, wait, slow down a second,” Merle made a calming motion at Davenport, “She knew about the crash and Barry and Lup dying before you went over? That’s…” He looked both ways, leaned close, and whispered, “really shitty.”

“Yes, I’d have to agree.” Davenport nodded as he started walking towards the stairs. “Before you ask, I don’t know who else knows. Apparently the Redcheecks have a cousin in the police who’s suppressing the story, but people must know something. I’ve been keeping an eye on the news, but there haven’t been any stories about the plane crash. Apparently the investigation is ongoing, for now, but we don’t know when that ends or someone finds out! I don’t know when someone might come for us with questions. Or, god, Lup and Barry. What are they going to do. What are we going to do…” Davenport sank down to crouch in front of the stairs.

“Hey,” Merle walked over to Davenport and draped himself over his husband’s back, “cheer up. We’re gonna be fine. Amazing, even! Lup and Barry are alive, we’re alive, everyone’s alive! We have a plant son who I love—”

“I love him, too,” Davenport muttered despite himself, “but only because he’s yours.”

“—whom  _ we _ love, and I have magic plant powers. You didn’t even notice, I bet, but all the flowers in the shop are blooming happily, even a few violets out of season. That’s Merle’s Magic for you.”

“I thought that was your degree in horticulture and years of training, Merle.”

“Anyway! We’ll be all right.” Merle chuckled as he wrapped his arms tighter around Davenport’s chest from behind. “Come on, get upstairs, start writing something to take your mind off it all. I’ll say goodnight to Eli and be up in a minute.”

Davenport hummed in acknowledgement and walked upstairs with a new spring in his step. He sat down at his writing desk in the cramped bedroom, looked out a small circular window into the night, and began to write to get away from it all. He typed away at lightning speed on his five-year old toshiba desktop, and at some point he began getting so deeply into the story, the rhythm of typing, the flow of ideas that he closed his eyes as he typed, already knowing where every key was before his fingers could land.

Merle came upstairs to find Davenport surrounded by pixies flitting through the air. They appeared to be miniscule specks of light with thin limbs, like filaments of brightly colored thread. They were enjoying flying around Davenport’s curly red hair and around his shoulders. He didn’t notice them.

“Dav, honey?” Merle ventured, “Take a moment from writing for a sec and look around.”

Davenport kept typing for a few more seconds, then nodded, shut his laptop softly, and leaned back to yawn, eyes closed. The movement of his head disturbed a few of the pixies that had been trying to investigate his hair. When he straightened, Davenport opened his eyes and saw the pixies floating in mid-air in front of him. He was silent.

Merle grinned and walked a bit closer to Davenport from the stairs as he asked, “Remind me, Dav, what was that new children’s book you’re writing about? I forgot.”

Davenport, stunned, shook his head in confusion and muttered dizzily, “The Pixie Pranksters of Roadham Lane,” he gulped, “Book two of The Capers of Caleb Cleveland: Kid Cop.”

As he finished speaking, a little boy appeared out of thin air. He was dressed in a sherlock-holmes style tweed jacket, which was comically too large for him. He had frizzy brown hair which poked out from under a sherlock-holmes style deerstalker hat, a pen draped over his ear. In his thin, pale hands, Caleb held a magnifying glass and a tiny notebook. Caleb looked around the room quickly, then pulled out his magnifying glass and began peering at random objects with methodical care.

Davenport nodded to himself at seeing that, seemingly pleased, then stood up suddenly from his desk. His motion pushed him through some startled pixies, which were untouched by his presence but still moved out of his space as soon as possible, instead flying over to Caleb to flutter around him instead.

“I can create life!” Davenport whooped out loud, raising his arms above his head. The pixies continued to fly around him, unbothered.

“Wait, hold on one moment…” Davenport said with resignation as he lowered his arms, “I need to investigate something.”

Merle watched curiously as Davenport walked over to Caleb Cleveland, Kid Cop, and waved a hand through the boy’s midsection. The image of the boy didn’t even waver, and he kept peering at the floor, the wall, and errant pixies with his magnifying glass.

Davenport sighed and raised his arms over his head again. “I mean, I can create… holographs! Yay!” He said with obvious disappointment.

Merle laughed and ran over to Davenport, jumping up and down in excitement as he grabbed his husband by the shoulders.

“This is so friggin’ awesome! You can do holographs! Oh, man, so you could make models appear at will, you can prank people really good, you can make your own entertainment… Davenport. You’re like a living, breathing, very adorable projector. This is amazing.”

“Merle, why don’t we just go to sleep?” Davenport asked tiredly, “We can talk about this in the morning.”

“Aww, come on, Dav,” Merle pleaded as he set Davenport down, “can I give a few requests first? I’ll magic grow you up any type of flower you want…”

Davenport thought hard for a moment, then shrugged. “I’ll do requests until I’m tired, I guess, in return for a single white rose.”

Merle was silent a beat. “You’re a saaaaap!” he shouted, leaning heavily on Davenport’s side. “But okay. Deal. Now, can you do fireworks? Oh, or sharks swimming around in mid air. Fireworks first, though. Then—”

Davenport and Merle watched illusions and talked until just after midnight, when they went to bed. 

Just before dawn the next day, the police received several complaints from the owners of apartments on 14th and Triboar Street, complaining of a strange animal knocking over trash cans, growling and barking in the night, and scratching the walls. The creature had left shallow furrows in the stone walls with its claws, and it was decided that whatever beast was out there, it wasn’t a stray dog. Animal Control and the Fire Department were called in to try and hunt down the animal before it could harm someone. They began prowling alleyways by midmorning. 

I was in bed, asleep, since I didn’t usually wake up before noon unless for emergencies. For a reason I couldn’t explain, though, I bolted upright at 10:12 with a feeling like I should check my computer. I immediately rolled off my futon, jogged over to my macbook, and opened it up to find my backdoor to the police records had picked up a new addition to an entry I’d previously accessed. The “stray dog” hair file, which I’d initially archived as just an oddity, was being upgraded to a real monster hunt. They were running a DNA test on their hair sample from the previous report and trying to find out what the monster was.

Obviously, I posted a brief summary of the situation to the Bureau Board on WTS, since it was a possible cryptid sighting. I said I was going to be trying to investigate in person, and if anyone wanted to meet up in person and help try to track down a mystery monster on their Friday morning, they were welcome to. I also mentioned in the post that I’d be armed with pepper spray in case someone tried to stalk me from the forums, because I’m a bit paranoid like that, and I left Brian in charge of moderating the forums while I was away. I was so busy preparing for the cryptid hunt I didn’t even notice how odd it had been that I’d bolted awake seconds after the file had updated, with no way of knowing that had happened. I suppose I’d thought it was instinct.

An hour and a half passed. It was almost lunch time, and I was thinking of quitting the search. I hadn’t been joined by any Seekers in my hunt, but I’d made some progress anyway. Asking around apartment owners, I got more exact—or at least more colorful—descriptions of the beast.

“Like the hulk gargling cough drops,” “A grizzly bear with a sore throat,” and “A cat having its leg hair waxed” were all interesting descriptions, though maybe not the most useful. I had a feeling I’d know if I was hearing a monster or a stray animal. No one had seen the thing, but judging by the size of the claw marks in the stone walls I was guessing the thing was just a little larger than a refrigerator. I wished I could talk to some of the Bigfoot Enthusiasts from WTS forums on how they approached cryptid hunting, but it would have taken too long to try and contact them for too little gain. I ended up following the police, animal control, and the fire department on their search from a safe distance. I took notes the whole time, of course.

We found it around noon. It was hunkered behind a dumpster in a dead-end alleyway, covered in garbage, holding a ball of bright white fire to its chest. I watched from the opening to the alleyway as several uniformed men stepped cautiously closer, nets at the ready.

The creature was eight and a half feet tall, by my approximation. It was covered in thick brown fur, with patchy clumps alternatively stuck together by mud and dirt or seemingly worn out, giving it a bedraggled look. Its arms and legs were surprisingly thin, though its shoulders were broad and its stomach wide for its build. It had a thick neck, and a face that looked like a bear and a pug mixed. It had black eyes, with yellow irises. As more hunters approached it, it looked up belatedly, shook its head, and leaped easily on top of the dumpster it had been sheltered behind. It still held the light in its arms.

I recognized the white fire from my previous encounter with it at the crash, and was furiously taking notes while keeping my eyes focused on the monster. It looked like it was getting ready to run, either further down the alley towards the dead end or through the mass of people. Its eyes shifted restlessly, hands clutched nervously at the orb of white flame. It also had claws that were close to the length of my forearm, so no one was approaching it.

I could hear several animal control personnel muttering about the size of the thing—it looked like a more muscled bigfoot, and maybe a bit taller. No one mentioned the white flame orb, which led me to believe they may not be seeing it. I wondered for a moment if I could be hallucinating, then dismissed the idea momentarily. The beast was obviously clutching something in its arms, and it made more sense to work from the notion that I was the only one who could see some sort of camouflaged object than that I was suddenly going mad. Well, looking back on it I suppose it doesn’t make more sense to think that at all, does it? But in the moment, I was facing down a bigfoot and investigating bodies in vats, so I was perhaps a bit too willing to accept fantastical elements, such as illusions only I could see through. I ended up being right, which is gratifying, but still. Poor logical skills, past Lucretia. For shame.

Anyway, Gundren Rockseeker stepped forward from the crowd of people, hands poised to calm down the creature.

“Easy, now,” he said, “I’m—”

Actually, shit. I’ve forgotten to introduce Gundren to readers who aren’t aware of him. He’s rather infamous now, so I’d just assumed… but I must make this accessible for all readers and historians of future ages, who may not be aware of the particulars. Readers who do know the particulars, skip the next paragraph if you wish. All else, please read on.

Gundren Rockseeker was a distant cousin of Merle’s, their exact relation being a touch murky even to historians such as myself. They met with a few dozen familiar relatives with a group called the “Cousin’s Club” that was, for all intents and purposes, a hodgepodge of every person related to the Rockseeker, Stonehammer, and Highchurch families in Phandalin. And every person related to those people. And anyone they happened to want to invite. In effect, they formed one giant mob of short people who descended on local bars a weekend or two per month, drank the place dry and talked about old family stories all night long, and disappeared into the shadows when dawn arose. Merle and Gundren met a few times at such Cousin’s Club Carousals, but “didn’t talk all that much,” according to Merle, on account of “Gundren [being] a frequent workaholic and a constant dick.” Gundren was a stockbroker, like his father before him, attempting to amass a portfolio that was actually worth more than a night of hard drinking could take from him. To supplement his bills, unfortunately, Gundren worked at the Fire Department many nights. He viewed it as a part-time job he took for his own convenience, since he could start when the stock market closed in the afternoon. If he’d chosen another night job, maybe we wouldn’t have GOTTEN into such a mess—but that’s off topic. Gundren worked as a firefighter during the night and when there were local emergencies he had to come in for. Before the Fire of Phandalin, he hadn't received any complaints or demerits about his performance, though his peers apparently thought him too recalcitrant and unwilling to come in during emergencies. If only he’d stayed home that day, too, then—but I’m going to get back to the story now.

Gundren stepped forwards, wearing a fireman’s suit and holding a bundled net borrowed from someone from animal control.

“Easy, now,” he said, “ I’m just going to send you in to the pound. Can’t have any strays going around and—yah!” he shouted and jumped forward, trying to cast the net over the creature.

It jumped out of the way, leaping towards the crowd and under the net. As it landed, though, the orb of fire spilled out of its hands and rolled across the ground, and the crowd tried to back away from the creature’s prone form. The orb came to rest near the front of the crowd. I tried to get closer, to look at it, but the crowd of hunters was too thick. From near the back of the crowd, I could just see Gundren shake his head in confusion and look down at the orb as if noticing it for the first time. Hesitantly, he reached down to try and touch it. The hairy beast jumped back from him and began loping towards the dead end of the alley way; it moved on its hind legs, arms pumping as it ran, which I made a quick note of. While it ran, Gundren touched the orb.

He vanished for a split second, so short a time I barely noticed even though my eyes were trained on him, and then he was back and the light was gone. He shrugged, straightened up, and turned to the crowd. Behind him, I could see the beast cowering in the corner of the alley under a high concrete wall. Trapped.

“Well,” called Gundren impatiently, “ I don’t know about you all, but I have work to get back to. Let’s bag this thing and get going.”

The crowd surged forwards with nets, and seemed to capture the beast without trouble; it didn’t put up much of a fight, didn’t even make sound. It just curled up in a ball and whimpered. I made a note of that, too, and left the scene just as the thing was being put in an Animal Control van. It looked like “real” reporters were reaching the scene, and I was… well, a tabloid reporter, for one thing, but also very not interested in having to watch actual professionals get all the facts wrong while I’d been on the scene from the beginning. Besides, I had research to do. I walked home.

When I got home, I went to get myself a late lunch. Half-way through making a quesadilla, though, I got a sudden urge to check my laptop messages. THIS time, at least, I noticed something… as Merle would say, “something fuck-y.” I obeyed my instinct, though, to see where it might lead me. I rushed over to my laptop, flipped it open, and saw a message from Brian.

[ItsyBitsyIncident]: Hello, Lucretia, I seem to be having something of an issue, relating to that white fire you told me to keep a lookout for

[ArxVeritas]: What is it?

[ArxVeritas]: I saw the light again today, by the way.

[ArxVeritas]: Any info could help.

[ArxVeritas]: You still there, Brian?

[ItsyBitsyIncident]: Sorry, I went afk right after I messaged you. Had to fix something.

[ItsyBitsyIncident]: So, I’m going to type a long message, and I don’t want you to interrupt because I’ll lose track and this is important

[ArxVeritas]: Ok?

I waited approximately eight minutes, watching the “other user is typing” message hover beneath the messages and wishing Brian could type faster or summarize or something. I was curious. Eventually, though, a message popped up. It filled most of my laptop screen, in paragraph form and everything. Of course Brian formatted his information into paragraphs while I was dying of curiosity and impatience.

[ItsyBitsyIncident]: Around, say, twenty minutes ago, an orb of white fire appeared in my living room. I ran over to message you as soon as I saw it, but I managed to snap a picture first for posterity because I know you’re always wanting that. So, I went and sent that first message asking what do do, then went back into the T.V. room and things were different.

So, I should probably tell you first, I own a grass spider named Briiiiiiiian, because it’s like my name, Brian, but with eight ‘i’s. I thought it was funny. I got him five months ago, and he’s lovely, and I keep him in a terrarium in my living room and feed him live bugs from the top of his terrarium while watching T.V. But I must have forgotten to close the lid on his cage when I stopped feeding him to go message you, because when I came back he’d touched the light I think.

When I told you I had to fix something, that something was that Briiiiiiiian was growing bigger and I had to move him in case he grew too big for his terrarium. I’ll just call him Brian from now on, you’ll know the difference. Actually, I’ll call him Magic Brian, because he’s magic now. He started growing bigger and bigger as soon as he touched the light, somewhat slowly, but noticeably, and it’s still happening. He’s in the backyard, currently T the size of a gerbil or so. He’s still growing but he likes me so he won’t hurt me or anything. Also, grass spiders aren’t venomous, so that’s fine. I’m a bit worried about his food source now.

Also, I have to ask, now. Where did you see the white fire? If it’s doing this to Magic Brian…

Are you okay, Lucretia?

 

I took a moment to collect myself after reading Brian’s message. It was good information; the white light gave superpowers. It was magic. Now, I had two important questions. Firstly, would I develop powers, and what would they be? Secondly, what the hell was going on with the plane crash, Barry and Lup, and the bodies in vats? More powers? This was getting more complex. I didn’t like it.

[ArxVeritas]: I’m managing. Brian, I think we should meet in person, and discuss the growth of the Bureau. We have, at minimum, two to three other powered individuals running around Phandalin and able to cause a very big mess. I think you, me, and the bureau could make sure people stay safe. Lastly, I don’t know if I have powers or not, but I am very excited to try and find out.

I heard the smoke alarm going off from the kitchen as I hit enter.

“Shit!” I thought, jumping up from my bed, dropping my laptop on the mattress, and running to save my burning quesadilla.

 

Barry got back to work on the day Gundren touched the Light, and Lup went back to school. Their bodies weren’t at full functionality, but the aesthetic details had been smoothed out and the internal functions only had a few snags. Barry returned to work perhaps five or ten pounds lighter, with fingernails stained the same green as the fluid his body had been built in, but other than that he looked the same as he had before he’d died. He did fix his eyesight when he rebuilt his body, though, and kept wearing glasses only for consistency and aesthetic. Lup went with a slightly more drastic change.

“Taako,” she’d told her brother, “I have wanted to design my body as I wanted to since I was, like, twelve. I’ve worked out, eaten healthy, and dressed to the nines like constantly. I’m going to make this body rock.”

Taako let her design her new body as she wanted, and she made it… beautiful, to put it simply. I’ve seen pictures, she was beautiful even before the new body, but she looks more at home in this creation of hers than I ever saw in the old photos. There’s more of a fire in her eyes, her smile is a touch sharper.

Lup gave herself long auburn hair that curled up and turned red at the ends. She added longer eyelashes, sharpened her cheeckbones and jawline, and gave herself pointed ears. Not excessive, mind you; they’re usually hidden by her hair, when she wears it down. Overall, I think the “edits” made her look like a fey creature set to burn your house down. Truly, an impressive bit of arcane cosmetic remodeling by Taako, and excellent taste from Lup.

Anyway, she went back to working on her fashion project at college, and told all her friends who asked that she’d gone on a week long trip to Vegas with her brother to get fancy cosmetic surgery, a hair job, and to cheat old single white men out of millions of dollars, which the twins promptly lost by spending it all on fine wines, hookers, and a truckload of lobster fettuccine. None of Lup’s friends voiced any doubts at this story.

Taako, finally done remaking Lup and Barry’s bodies, took a 17-hour nap, then ate two boxes of Kraft mac-and-cheese and went to bed again. Magic takes a lot out of him, sometimes.

Barry went back to writing op-eds about fashion trends and going to clothing shows, which he found a little boring now that he knew magic was real and he’d helped create a functioning human body from scratch. Still, he wrote a surprisingly passionate review about a line of leather handbags that came out during the week he’d been a ghost, so he was trying to make up for lost time. His co-workers were concerned when he told them he’d come down with “a bad flu” for a week, mainly because Barry’s always been a terrible liar, but they shrugged it off and didn’t push him. That’s good, because Barry is a terrible liar.

So the three of them were back to something close to normal, and trying to adjust as best they could. Merle and Davenport had found their powers and were trying to deal with the aftermath of the plane crash, plus their new plant son. Magnus was just enjoying his time with Julia as much as he could, trying not to screw anything up. They all had one more peaceful day, and then Gundren had to go and fuck it all up. Lup, too, to a lesser extent, but I’d still argue it was mainly Gundren’s fault.

 

It was eight days since the crash when Gundren’s powers manifested. I don’t have video of it, and I wasn’t there when it happened, but apparently he got mad that his car wouldn’t start in the morning before going out for the day, and he started shouting. He went to kick at it.

When his foot hit the car, there was a small explosion, and his car went flying through the parking garage. I’ve seen the evidence files from the police, actually looked at the car. On the left side, by the gas port, there’s a large dent covered in black glass. 

The explosion attracted witnesses, and while their stories differ slightly the chain of events is relatively clear. Gundren paused for a moment, yelled something angrily, and then ran off after his car. A few feet into his run, small sparks and explosions beneath his feet rocketed him into the air. They continued sparking while he was aloft, levitating him in the air. He paused once more, looked down at his flight, then shouted something happily and flew out of the garage. Several bystanders called 911 about the destroyed car and flying man, and when the police arrived, saw the black glass, and entered the new evidence into their system, my power—or, I thought at the time, surprisingly good instincts—warned me to check the police records. By the time I was alerted to Gundren’s powers awakening, though, it was too late.

Gundren didn’t show up to work that day, instead taking a quick tour around the city by flight. He circled the city several times, slowly getting better and better with his technique, learning to control the explosions from his feet that let him fly. More and more people on the streets saw him shoot across the sky above them or heard him shouting for joy and yelling down at them. At least one person took video footage with their cell phone.

“I’m the king of the wooooorld!” one video shows Gundren shout as he speedily flies circles around the city park’s perimeter.

“Up, up, and away!” another video shows him coming down to the point that his feet almost touch the pavement in front of an amazed onlooker, then triggering a huge explosion beneath his feet that blasted him far into the sky. A crater of black glass was left on the street beneath him, and one can see cars honking and attempting to swerve around the patch just before the video ends.

Lup saw the videos around twenty minutes after they were posted, since they went viral quickly on most social media platforms. She texted the other Starblasters about the situation, then went with Barry and Taako to go and try to find Gundren. Barry wanted to study him, Taako wanted to talk to him, and Lup wanted to “get on his case,” whatever that meant. It wasn’t too hard to find him, once he started hovering over Main Street and monologuing.

“My name is Gundren Rockseeker. I’m—sorry, I  _ was _ a stockbroker.” He laughed, “I was a stockbroker! Now, I’m… well, I guess you could say I’m letting this get to my head. You’d be wrong. I’m a force of nature, now.  _ Fuck _ the stocks, the market, car, house, night job, alarms, fires, humans! I’m better than a human now!” He giggled to himself, holding up his fist and causing a minor explosion from his hand for fun. Half the crowd flinched.

“Here’s a PSA from Gundren, kids: is someone recording this? I hope so. Spread this shit. Listen, humans: if you see a white ball of fire, grab it up fast and don’t listen to the voices! They lie, and they don’t know shit. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some powers I’m itching to test out.” Gundren saluted the crowd and flew off.

Taako, Barry, and Lup didn’t even exchange a glance. As Gundren flew away, all three of them broke into a run following him. They couldn’t run as fast as Gundren could fly, though, and when she realized that Lup had an… unfortunate… idea.

“Guys, take me into a back alley or something and hide my body for a bit. Make it look like I’m sleeping or something. I’m abouta vacate the premises, if you know what I mean.” Lup pulled Barry and Taako by the sleeves over to a back alley behind some stores, let go of their sleeves, and fell to the ground, prone.

Lup’s ghost rose from her body, dabbed at Barry, turned and dabbed at Taako seperately (Taako dabbed back while Barry watched on in confusion and horror), and flew off after Gundren. As she left, Taako muttered to Barry, “I’m gonna need a magic marker, stat.”

Lup followed Gundren, managing to catch up to him after five minutes or so of following the sound of explosions from afar. When she reached him, he was hovering over the  _ Phandolin Inquirer _ building, practicing using his explosions to shoot shards of black glass, flicking his hand out to watch specks of black go flying into the sky. He hardly noticed as Lup flew up from below him until she was right in front of him, speaking.

“Hey, smoky,” Lup nodded at Gundren casually, “what’s with the pyrotechnics? Got some anger to work out?”

“Oh.” Gundren looked over at her, eyes widening slightly, “Sorry, I didn’t know… Yeah, actually, that makes sense. There would be others before me. Hi, I’m Gundren.” He extended a hand to shake.

“Lup.” Lup reached out a spectral hand ineffectually, and he saw and laughed, withdrawing his own hand apologetically.

“Ghost, huh? Guess we can’t really… yeah. So, I’m just testing out my powers, basically. I can make explosions from my hands or feet, these little fires that can rocket me around. My feet are basically jet boots now!” He looked down at his feet, shoes having been blown off by explosions. The soles of his feet were shooting off extremely minor constant explosions, keeping him hovering unsteadily in mid air.

“Yeah, it’s great,” Gundren commented, “But I feel different than I did before. Not just physically, but mentally, too. Like I can hear a fire in the back of my head. I’ve always liked fires, you know?”

Lup nodded, but he ignored her, staring off into the distance, and continued, “Fire is greedy. It consumes, consumes, feeds itself everything in sight until it’s full to bursting, then starves once it’s had its fill. They can be born, killed, fed, starved, just like people. Fires are beautiful.”

Lup nodded once more, hesitantly, and spoke. “Yeah, I got you. They’re pretty lit.” When Gundren didn’t get it, she continued a bit awkwardly, “Okay, that’s fine, I’ll tell Taako about it later and he’ll laugh. Um, you wanna maybe talk to him, or some of my other friends? Well, okay, it’s my brother, he’s Taako, plus my boyfriend and some new acquaintances who I think are pretty cool. Some of them have powers, too.”

Gundren shrugged, then thought for a moment, then shook his head. “I’d rather not get involved with your clique right now. I want to take whatever I can from this high while it lasts, burn as bright as possible, you know? I can fly around for fun as long as I like, ignore my old life, be a superhero, rob banks, start fires… Sorry, Do you want to get out of here? We can race, since I see you can fly and I can fly too, but better, more powerfully, because of the fire-explosion things I make. Sorry. Keep getting distracted.” He laughed self-consciously while Lup tried to not look like she was freaking out on the outside.

“Sounds great!” Lup said with fake cheer, “We can go around the city limit, see who can go faster. Uh, lets race above route 41.3, instead of the city limits, since the highway makes almost a circle around the city. Let’s find our starting point and get going?”

She was terrified Gundren was going to go off and hurt someone, or he’d leave and she wouldn’t get a chance to talk to him and get him to meet the group. She was also confident she could win the race, then convince him to join her in peer mediation or counseling or whatever with her friends. Honestly, I don’t really understand her reasoning, now, but it’s a bit late to critique her plan. The damage was… better than if it had happened over the city center.

Gundren nodded silently, and the two of them swiftly found their way to the closest entrance onto route 41.3 on the outskirts of town. When they arrived, they floated in awkward silence for a moment, then Gundren said, almost surprised at himself, “Oh, I suppose we’d better start. Last one back’s a rotten egg!” and he shot off with a blast as soon as he was done speaking. Lup cursed under her breath and followed him.

The race was close, at first, since Gundren’s explosive blasts gave him great acceleration, but Lup was unbothered by air resistance or limits on her acceleration, moving faster than a speeding car as long as she could focus hard on her flight. She still can’t explain to me exactly how she does it, just saying “It’s like holding your hand in a really tight fist for a long time. Except the hand is your mind. And the fist is the concept of flight.”

But Gundren began to pick up speed. From what scientists (mainly Barry and myself) can surmise from educated guesses, Gundren learned an improvement on his powers on the fly. No pun intended, believe me. Gundren’s explosions had been using trace amounts of dead skin and dust as “fuel” for his explosions, creating incredibly efficient energy output from the organic material. Gundren realized he could harness this, consciously giving up more skin from his body and drawing in more biological material from the air to use as fuel. He began raining black glass behind him in the wake of each explosion, moving further and further ahead of Lup until he was almost out of sight. 

Then, at 10:51 am exactly, Gundren caused an explosion so massive it levelled four blocks.

We think he got greedy, in the end. Tried to make an explosion using too much of his own body as fuel, or, the more prevalent theory, tried to convert matter directly into an explosion without burning it properly with his power. It would have only taken one mishap, we think, for his power to leave his control and cannibalize his body. Considering his explosions earlier had been fueled by trace amounts of dead skin, the reaction when his power was fed a whole body… 

The explosion itself only levelled a few blocks of the suburbs on the outskirts of the city, mainly affecting a large portion of a local Walmart and some surrounding homes. We know 138 people died in the initial blast, at least. After that, the black glass began to take over.

It didn’t spread much, but the glass around the edges of the explosion area ended up consuming a much larger area; any place that could feel the impact but wasn’t directly caught in the blast became covered in shining obsidian, almost instantly. An additional 852 are known to have died in the follow-up, though numbers aren’t as precise as from the explosion. Every building, every body, anything at all in the area of almost half a mile around the area Gundren died, it was all transmuted into black glass in an instant. 

Lup described it, once. She said, about watching the explosion from afar, “ it was like seeing a sun go supernova, when Barry and I would watch the old  _ Cosmos _ show. You know, with Carl Sagan. It was a bright spot, then for less than a second it was  _ huge _ , then it was dark, but I only realized afterwards it was only dark because of how bright the explosion before had been. It didn’t even register as real, for a second.

“The part that made it real for me was when I saw the fires sprout up around the edges of the black glass circle. They weren’t that big, immediately, and they weren’t really bright, or even that dangerous looking. I mean, everybody on the inside was dead already, and the fires along the edge weren’t spreading so fast that people couldn’t run away. The houses in the suburbs were pretty spread out, and minus a couple of small shopping malls I don’t think the fires had anywhere to spread to, really.

But the fires were white, and I felt like even from a few hundred feet away from them I could hear voices in my head layered over each other. I started flying towards them, stopped, then went to go find Barry and Taako. And my body. And the Starblasters.”

And that’s the story of how the Fire of Phandalin began.

⧖⧖⧖ That chapter was… draining, to write. Looking over it now, I’m not sure if I;ve done a disservice to you by not including more, or disrespected the victims by telling it the way I have, or even offended Gundren’s family by not exploring what he felt like when his power turned on him like it did. I’m not sure I’ll be able to cover all the fallout from the fire, but next week I want to touch on two main things, if I can. Firstly, I’ll tell you about the Starblasters and their first mission as heroes. Or, close enough. Secondly, I’ll try and catch you up on the major shifts in the Bureau immediately following the fire. It was an important time for all of us, and I just know writing it is going to be… well. I might take an extra week or two, it might turn out incredibly shitty and I’ll lose the few readers who’ve stuck around. But if you do stick around, if you’re not deterred by the Fire and aren’t disappointed in how I’ve written it all so far, I’ll be seeing you again soon enough. In the meanwhile, Dear Reader, Watch The Sky. ⧖⧖⧖

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK but i agree with lucretia, this really was draining to write, plus im super busy with school and junk and this part is tough for me. Anyway, I'll keep at it, I DID get the chapter up in time barely, so I'll just rest on my laurels for a while. Might be late to update by a few days (or a week) next week so I can make a longer update and incorporate multiple character narratives into it, but I hope it will be worth the wait. Until then, leave a comment and let me know what you like or don't like about this chapter, I'm not the most experienced at writing action so any advice for that or requests for people/stuff for upcoming arcs will be considered! if I dont die writing this next chapter! See you later!


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